After conceding eleven humiliating defeats that pulverize the record of failures reached a hundred years ago by another candidate for the presidency of the House of Representatives, the current Republican candidate for the position, Kevin McCarthy, opened his day this Friday with a desperate discussion to get elected. For this he needed to convince at least 16 of the 20 ultras of his group that so far, in those eleven votes held in the three previous days, they had voted against him. Or, in the event that there were absences or abstentions that lowered the threshold of the necessary majority over nominal votes, to a proportional figure and equivalent to those 16 out of 20. Difficult.
After a few hours of discussions, and when there was less than one left for the voting to resume in the chamber, McCarthy told the Republicans in the pro-government sector that he had just reached an agreement with one of the leaders of the ultra rebellion, Chip Roy. This, in turn, could attract the support of "up to ten other" representatives to the candidacy. The numbers improved, but the accounts did not finish coming out.
So while other lawmakers reminisced about the bloody ultra assault on the Capitol on its second anniversary, McCarthy had to continue negotiating to reduce the number of internal opponents of his candidacy; Specifically, the limit of negative votes within his group is four.
But what else could the candidate offer after the enormous assignments he had already made hours and days before? I was about to see; the same, of course, as the final result of the twelfth ballot. A result that already seemed decisive to determine if his aspiration to the position continued to be sustainable.
Until now, or at least before the deal with Chip Roy was announced, the long-suffering Republican presidential candidate has accepted demands as difficult for himself and for the House as that a single legislator can force a vote of no confidence against the president ( until now the Republicans had agreed that the support of half the group would be required): a precept that would obviously leave him at the feet of the horses, given the pyrrhic majority of the formation in the House - of 222 seats compared to 213 of the Democrats - and the belligerence of the group's own ultras.
The Republican leader would also have agreed that the far-right faction, barely 10% of the total formation in the House, choose a third of the Republican representatives in the Rules Committee, which is the one that controls what legislation reaches the full and in what form.
McCarthy also accepts that the electoral financing fund associated with his leadership will stop paying for the campaigns of pro-government candidates for the primaries of the different elections. In this way, the ultras would overcome what they consider a disadvantage of entering the electoral calls, as minorities to whom the money from that fund does not reach.
McCarthy is also willing, according to unofficial information from the Republicans themselves, that government spending bills can be opened to debates in which any legislator would be empowered to force votes to amend such budgets.
But for now, even all of that is not enough. Vote number twelve opened this Friday with more hope than the previous ones; not enough The candidate himself practically admitted it in the corridors when, before entering the chamber, he said: "You will see that some people who have been voting against me are now voting for me."
The twelfth session would immediately register, indeed, some changes in the vote. But the ultras immediately added up and exceeded the (five) necessary to practically ensure a new bump for McCarthy.
In the end, the candidate obtained 13 more supports from his own than in the previous eleven sessions. Out of 431 nominal votes cast, the candidate received 213 affirmative and 218 who went to other options: 211 to the Democratic candidate, Hakeem Jeffries and 7 to the two Republican candidates proposed by the ultras (Jim Jordan and Kevin Hern). McCarthy therefore lacked three votes to get ahead, since he can only afford four defections from his own.
And, although in the twelfth session there were three absences that lowered the majority threshold (from 218 to 216), there are still three rebels that the Californian conservative has to persuade to become House speaker. He is now much closer than yesterday, but he still lacks support.
The parliamentary body began shortly before two in the afternoon, eight at night in Spain, the thirteenth voting session. With a novelty This time the ultras did not present candidates. However, some rebels continued to vote for other applicants. And soon they surpassed the maximum of 4 that the candidate could fit without losing the majority; At the end of the vote, they totaled 6: still two more negative votes than McCarthy can accept from his groupmates.
At the end of that thirteenth vote, the Republicans proposed a postponement until ten at night –four in the morning in Spain– to give themselves time to continue negotiating and crown an agreement. The conservatives got that margin.
This Saturday we will know if McCarthy is the new president of the United States House of Representatives or if the far-right opposition continues to resist him. We are going, in any case, to two years of devilish legislature in the United States. For Joe Biden of course. For McCarthy, too. And for the country, without a doubt
