After six failed votes and in the midst of what their own and others already consider a national "shame" and "embarrassment", the Republican candidate for the presidency of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, conceded on Wednesday night all classes of prerogatives to the twenty representatives of his party who had been boycotting his aspirations for two days and preventing the restart of the legislature.
He did not avail. This Thursday she lost a seventh ballot and now faces an eighth without any signs of change.
On that night from Wednesday to Thursday, after the sixth vote against him, McCarthy accepted from the outset that a single member of the House can present a motion of no confidence against the president of the institution, that is, himself if in the end it turns out chosen.
Until now, the Republicans required themselves a minimum of half the group to formulate that proposal. McCarthy, despite initially saying that this was a red line, had accepted that five signatures would suffice. Last night's transfer of him at this point borders on suicidal, given the belligerence of the ultras who have failed him before starting.
McCarthy agreed to the rebels' demand that the electoral finance fund tied to the Republican leadership in the House allocate funds to the official candidates in the primaries. In this way, the alternative options of the ultras would have more possibilities.
The candidate would have promised to reserve key seats in the Chamber for the far-right parliamentary group Caucus for Freedom; Among them would be at least two seats on the powerful House Rules Committee, which oversees the amendment process.
The hitherto unsuccessful presidential hopeful would also have agreed to host a vote on term limits. Representative Ralph Norman specifically advocates for a constitutional amendment that would establish a three-term limit for all legislators.
The definitive acceptance of these requests and of other similar ones that McConell would have already assumed would weaken his presidency to unknown limits. And they would give the ultras excessive power that would endanger the normal functioning of the most important representative institution in the country. A dysfunction that in fact is already a reality by virtue of some failed votes that keep the United States Congress totally blocked.
The truth is that the Chamber held a seventh vote this afternoon, and the results were very similar to those of the previous six, and no less frustrating.
McCarthy got 201 votes; the alternative candidate of the ultra rebels, the African-American Byron Donalds, 19 votes, and the Democrat and representative for New York Hakeem Jeffries, 212 votes. Representative Matt Gaetz, one of the most significant ultras, voted for Donald Trump. A joke, but an eloquent joke: the ex-president's extremist supporters don't take what they're doing too seriously.
McCarthy does not have enough votes to adjourn the session and deepen internal talks and with the wayward members of his party instead of subjecting himself time and again to new bumps. Hence, after the seventh defeat, the Chamber began an eighth vote, at this time still in progress.
Without a president, the Chamber cannot function. He cannot pay his salaries to the staff - which is his responsibility to do on the 13th - as the officials warned days ago. Nor can it fully formalize the entry of new members -until then only authorized to elect the here called speaker- through the oath of office. And, of course, the body cannot legislate or approve the expenses that require parliamentary approval.
In a bicameral system like the US, such a sequestration represents a blockade of Congress as a whole. A blockade of the country, you could say. And a situation that has not occurred since 1923, an exact century, when the Republican Frederick Gillett needed nine votes to, with 215 votes, win the deck of president of this same institution.
The outlook, as the eighth ballot unfolds, is uncertain. It doesn't look good.
