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The Republican candidate to succeed Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, has failed to get enough votes as his party’s hard-line Trump supporters hold back their vote as too moderate. New vote this Wednesday.
With Cristóbal Vásquez, RFI correspondent in Washington
It has not happened for 100 years: the new United States House of Representatives adjourned this Tuesday without being able to elect its president due to tensions between Republicans.
Republican Kevin McCarthy (California), who was nominated by his party in an internal vote to be the next speaker of the House of Representatives, failed to get the 218 votes needed to be confirmed in office after three votes of the plenary of the House of Representatives. Lower House that were held since noon yesterday, something that had not happened since 1923.
Twenty congressmen from the most conservative wing of the Republicans voted in favor of House representative Jim Jordan (Ohio), a congressman who curiously voted to confirm McCarthy.
The concessions that McCarthy made to these congressmen were not enough and the paralysis shows a division among the Republican Party that is facing to toughen immigration policies, reduce the size of the government, its social programs and limit the fight against climate change. The internal dispute disempowers them vis-à-vis the Democrats, who unanimously supported Hakeem Jeffries, the new leader of the Democratic minority in the House and the first African-American to hold office.
The voting cycle will continue this Wednesday at noon in Washington until Kevin McCarthy or another candidate achieves a majority of 218 votes out of 434 seats.
At the end of the day Tuesday, Trump criticized “superfluous agitation” within the Republicans, the party with which he wants to run in the 2024 presidential elections.
Known as “speaker”, the president of the Lower House is the third most important figure in American politics after the president and vice president.
McCarthy seems willing to make concessions to the most conservative to avoid history repeating itself, since in 2015 the right wing of the party already prevented him from holding office. But he also can’t afford to turn against moderate Republicans.
Although their room for maneuver is limited, at the moment they do not have a strong rival. As a possible alternative, only the name of Jim Jordan is circulating.
