Top Republican Kevin McCarthy’s bid for Speaker fails on first day of 118th Congress

House Repub­li­can Leader Kevin McCarthy was humil­i­at­ed by col­leagues from his own par­ty on Tues­day, as for the first time in one hun­dred years, Con­gress’ low­er cham­ber failed to elect a House Speak­er on its first ballot.

McCarthy came up short three times, a sign that Repub­li­can have brought chaos rather than con­trol to the House.

The defec­tion of twen­ty far-right Repub­li­cans not only blocked McCarthy from the Speaker’s chair but pre­vent­ed the House from organizing.

The cham­ber adjourned until mid­day on Wednes­day, amidst swirling rumors and Repub­li­can recrim­i­na­tions. Ex-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump appeared to with­draw sup­port from McCarthy, who has repeat­ed­ly tried to obstruct efforts to hold Trump account­able for the Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capitol.

The stale­mate left Wash­ing­ton’s U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray tem­porar­i­ly sec­ond in line for the pres­i­den­cy, a posi­tion nor­mal­ly held by the House Speaker.

Mur­ray was unan­i­mous­ly cho­sen as Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore of the U.S. Sen­ate, where Democ­rats still hold sway. Mur­ray is the first woman to hold a posi­tion hith­er­to the domain of tough old men.

“I am tru­ly hon­ored to have earned the con­fi­dence of my col­leagues to serve in the role, and the sig­nif­i­cance of this moment is cer­tain­ly not lost on me,” Mur­ray said in accept­ing the post. She was sworn in by Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris with a stand­ing bipar­ti­san ovation.

Across the Capi­tol, there was acrimony.

McCarthy, with 202 votes, trailed new House Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Hakeem Jef­fries, who gained unan­i­mous sup­port from his 212-mem­ber cau­cus. The Democ­rats appeared in high spir­its, cheer­ing their leader’s vote totals on the House floor.

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion moved to con­trast its achieve­ments and com­mit­ment to bipar­ti­san­ship with the Repub­li­cans’ fratricide.

The 46th Pres­i­dent will appear Wednes­day in Cov­ing­ton, Ken­tucky, to cel­e­brate the bipar­ti­san infra­struc­ture pack­age. He will be accom­pa­nied by Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Mitch McConnell and Ohio’s Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Mike DeWine along with Kentucky’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Andy Beshear. They will appear at the Brent Spence Bridge, which links the Buck­eye and Blue­grass states.

“We do pro­found things for the coun­try when we work togeth­er,” White House press sec­re­tary Karine Jean-Pierre told the dai­ly brief­ing. Watch­ing the Repub­li­cans’ inter­nal feud, she added: “We’re cer­tain­ly not going to insert our­selves in what’s hap­pen­ing on the oth­er side of Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene, D‑Washington, chair of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, was not so ret­i­cent. “The 118th Con­gress has yet to begin and Amer­i­cans are already see­ing how dis­as­trous GOP con­trol of the House is going to be,” she said in a state­ment. “No mat­ter who becomes Speak­er of the House or how many votes it takes, the con­trast is clear and in two short years vot­ers will reject the MAGA chaos and confusion.”

The Speak­er stale­mate put off by a day the swear­ing in of Rep. Marie Glue­senkamp-Perez, D‑Washington, the auto repair shop co-own­er elect­ed to rep­re­sent South­west Wash­ing­ton in Con­gress, and of Andrea Sali­nas, D‑Oregon, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Beaver State’s new 6th Con­gres­sion­al District.

With deft under­state­ment, how­ev­er, MGP under­scored dys­func­tion on the oth­er side of the aisle. “We want peo­ple who fix things for a liv­ing,” she said, adding: “The can­di­date selec­tion process is fun­da­men­tal­ly broken.”

Oppo­si­tion to McCarthy was splin­tered among far right Repub­li­cans on the first bal­lot. It coa­lesced lat­er behind Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Jor­dan, R‑Ohio, the stri­dent elec­tion denier who is a fix­ture on Rupert Mur­doch’s FNC. Quite like­ly play­ing a dou­ble game, how­ev­er, Jor­dan him­self nom­i­nat­ed McCarthy and vot­ed for McCarthy. Jor­dan is in line to chair the House Judi­cia­ry Committee.

The extreme right cost the Repub­li­cans numer­ous House and Sen­ate races last Novem­ber. Glue­senkamp Perez was elect­ed over Trump-endorsed elec­tion denier Joe Kent, after Kent upset Repub­li­can incum­bent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler in the August Top Two elec­tion. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mary Pel­to­la, D‑Alaska, beat for­mer Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Sarah Palin to win a House seat held for forty-nine years by Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Don Young.

Ex-Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Her­rera Beut­ler sur­faced on CNN. “I hate it, I absolute­ly hate it,” she said of the Speak­er stale­mate. “There’s noth­ing good that comes of it… I think extremes right now on both sides of the aisle are wag­ging the dog.”

The bat­tle over Speak­er pro­duced angry divi­sions even among ultra MAGA Repub­li­cans. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene and one­time House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich backed McCarthy, with Gin­grich going on Fox News to denounce cau­cus dis­si­dents. Hav­ing made a deal to back McCarthy, Greene turned her back on bud­dy Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz and said: “They’re hold­ing this coun­try hostage and pre­vent­ing us from doing our job for the people.”

In turn, the atten­tion-hun­gry Gaetz, R‑Florida, took to the House floor and sneered at McCarthy’s lengthy pur­suit of the Speak­er­ship, say­ing the Cal­i­for­nia con­gress­man has “sold shares of him­self for more than a decade to get it.”

Trump had giv­en his endorse­ment to the supine McCarthy, who made a pen­i­ten­tial pil­grim­age to Mar a Lago short­ly after the Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol. But Trump, when asked lat­er in the day about McCarthy’s endan­gered bid, told a radio host: “We’ll see what happens.”

Both remain­ing Repub­li­cans in Washington’s del­e­ga­tion, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers and Dan New­house, vot­ed for McCarthy. CMR is in line to chair the pow­er­ful House Ener­gy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee, where she has pledged feal­ty to the fos­sil fuel indus­try, with more oil drilling and coal min­ing on fed­er­al lands.

What is going to happen?

McCarthy has kow­towed to the far right, promis­ing mul­ti­ple inves­ti­ga­tions of the Biden fam­i­ly and even of the Jan­u­ary 6th com­mit­tee that has been inves­ti­gat­ing the insur­rec­tion. He has deliv­ered lengthy, hyper­bole-laden House floor speech­es denounc­ing Sen­ate Repub­li­cans (includ­ing McConnell) for vot­ing for the $1.7 tril­lion fed­er­al spend­ing bill. He railed against the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act.

Not enough, say the dis­si­dents. In words of Mon­tana Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Rosendale, speak­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post: “We need a leader who can stand up to a Sen­ate and Pres­i­dent Biden and unfor­tu­nate­ly it isn’t Kevin McCarthy.” Rosendale argued that more rules are need­ed to empow­er the GOP rank-and-file.

But con­ces­sions have made McCarthy look weak, and only fueled the extreme right’s strat­e­gy: The more we demand, the more we get. “Time to make the change or get out of the way,” they said in a let­ter to McCarthy late on Monday.

McCarthy erupt­ed in anger at a Repub­li­can cau­cus meet­ing on Tues­day morn­ing, declar­ing: “I earned this job. We earned this major­i­ty, and (exple­tive) we are going to win it today.” He angri­ly rebuffed demands by Gaetz and Scott Per­ry, chair­man of the House Free­dom Cau­cus, for plum com­mit­tee assignments.

Where have the rea­son­able Repub­li­can gone?

It appeared Tues­day that they’ve decamped from Con­gress and onto cable TV pro­grams. Those remain­ing in the House have lined up with McCarthy, say­ing they will stick with the embat­tled leader come hell or high water. “Kevin McCarthy is going to be Speak­er: I don’t think there is any ques­tion about it, I think the ques­tion is how many rounds it takes,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bri­an Fitz­patrick, R‑Pa.

Sent to the side­lines, Her­rera Beut­ler urged McCarthy to show backbone.

“The real­i­ty, the major­i­ty of the Repub­li­can cau­cus is not going to give into these demands,” she told CNN. “When you put your foot down, you get bet­ter results than not.”

The mess on Day One of the new Con­gress is embell­ish­ing the tough-as-nails rep­u­ta­tion of for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi.

With a 222-seat major­i­ty, Pelosi was able to push through land­mark infra­struc­ture leg­is­la­tion, the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act, a land­mark bill to revive America’s com­put­er chip indus­try, a mod­est pack­age of gun safe­ty mea­sures, plus fed­er­al recog­ni­tion of LBGTQ+ mar­riages. The nar­row Demo­c­ra­t­ic advan­tage in the 117th Con­gress held togeth­er on all of the above votes.

With 222 Repub­li­can seats, Kevin McCarthy can­not even secure the Speaker’s job.