Only nine months after taking office, Kevin McCarthy, the third person in the United States and Speaker of the House of Representatives, was removed from office on October 3. CNN said that this is the first time in American history that the Speaker of the House of Representatives was voted out.
Not only did he create history when he left office, but McCarthy also staged an embarrassing farce of "once in a hundred years" when he took office at the beginning of this year-after four days and 15 rounds of voting, he barely became the speaker, which was the longest voting in the House of Representatives election for more than 160 years since the Civil War.
Unexpectedly, McCarthy was kicked off the speaker’s position before his ass got hot after he got to the top.
According to Lv Xiang, an expert on American issues at China Academy of Social Sciences, McCarthy’s dismissal was expected. In the initial campaign tug-of-war, McCarthy agreed to lower the threshold of the "recall motion" in order to win the votes of ultra-conservatives in the party, which in itself laid the groundwork for his stepping down. "The end has long been doomed, but I was not sure when this day would come."
Feeling of being dismissed"great"
Judging from the voting results of the recall motion, there were 216 votes in favor and 210 votes against it. In the House of Representatives, which has a majority of Republican seats, McCarthy obviously lost some of his party support votes, that is, some Republican lawmakers "defected" and voted in favor of the recall of McCarthy together with Democratic lawmakers.
·The picture of the US House of Representatives voting on the resolution to recall Republican Speaker McCarthy.
Why was McCarthy "abandoned" by the Republican Party? The direct cause is the parliamentary dispute over the appropriation bill.
The fiscal year 2023 in the United States ended on September 30, and the Democratic Party and the Republican Party had been fighting endlessly over the federal budget appropriation bill for the new fiscal year. Just at the last moment when the government was on the verge of running out of money and preparing to close the door, the short-term appropriation bill was passed on the evening of September 30, local time, temporarily avoiding the crisis of the US federal government’s lockout again.
In fact, the Republican Party originally wanted to give the Democratic US President Biden a "color" look through the appropriation bill.
Ultra-conservatives in the Republican Party have been pressuring McCarthy not to support any provisional appropriation bill, and even threatened to let McCarthy step down once the provisional appropriation bill was passed.
As a result, the Republicans designed it for a long time, and McCarthy broke the chain at the last minute and compromised with the Democratic Party, so that the appropriation bill was passed.
The appropriation bill was passed, and McCarthy was regarded as "meritorious" on the Democratic side, but it also angered the Republican Party and became the fuse for his dismissal.
After being dismissed, McCarthy held a press conference and said that he felt "great" and that he would not run for the Speaker again.
Some media analysts said that McCarthy’s abandonment of re-election is actually saving face. Although he can run for election again immediately according to the law, since he was elected as the speaker after a full 15 rounds of voting last time, it will definitely not be easy if he runs for election again.
·This is McCarthy, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Republican Party, filmed in Washington, DC on September 29th. Xinhua news agency
During his nine months as Speaker of the House of Representatives, McCarthy was repeatedly challenged by ultra-conservatives in the Republican Party.
Earlier this year, the United States almost defaulted on its debt. McCarthy and Biden reached a compromise in May, and Congress passed a bill on the government debt ceiling. At that time, the ultra-conservatives in the Republican Party thought that McCarthy had not pushed hard enough to cut government spending, and once considered proposing a motion to remove McCarthy.
It’s not that McCarthy hasn’t thought about "saving himself". In September this year, on the issue of impeaching Biden, McCarthy handed out an "olive branch" to the radicals in the Republican Party.
On September 12, McCarthy said in Congress that the investigation of Biden’s family members by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee found that Biden’s family had a "culture of corruption" and there might be "abuse of power, obstruction of justice and corruption", so "I announced today that the House Committee will formally launch an impeachment investigation against President Biden".
According to US media reports, McCarthy announced an impeachment investigation against Biden, to some extent to meet the requirements of the far-right conservatives in the Republican Party in the House of Representatives. Some conservative Republican lawmakers said that the impeachment investigation against Biden was only a "small step" and "we should speed up the pace of action". If McCarthy moves slowly, measures may be taken to "step down".
McCarthy, who was threatened to "step down" without a word, was completely caught.
"An actor with poor acting skills"
We can "unite" Republicans by impeaching Biden, or compromise with Democrats for the benefit. It is precisely because of this characteristic of have it both ways that McCarthy is described by the American media as "the best congressional chameleon".
"McCarthy is a typical opportunist. Generally speaking, he is a Republican, but staunch Republicans don’t trust him. " Lu Xiang said that after McCarthy took office, he tried to get support from many parties, but the Republican party could not understand it. He would also play the idea of the Democratic Party and do something to please it. But in the end, McCarthy, who used to be a "fence-sitter" and "fence-sitter", only ended up being dismissed.
In the American political arena where money is paramount, McCarthy’s history can be described as "another way". He can sit in the "third place" with "excellent interpersonal skills".
In 1965, McCarthy was born into an ordinary family in California. His father was a fireman and his grandfather owned a small ranch. As an adult, McCarthy worked as a worker and opened a sandwich shop. In 1987, 22-year-old McCarthy sold the store and used the money to study at California State University.
During his college years, McCarthy met the "Bole" who changed his fate, then Republican Congressman Bill Thomas. McCarthy followed Thomas into the Republican Party and grew from an intern to a long-term congressman around Thomas.
In 2002, 37-year-old McCarthy was elected to the California House of Representatives. In 2007, he entered the Congress to take over the position of Representative Thomas, and inherited his political legacy.
·McCarthy.
Since he entered Congress, McCarthy has aimed at the throne of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He brought his "interpersonal skills" into full play.
For example, McCarthy can name all members’ families and even know the birthdays of members’ children. He often appears in non-work places such as the National Assembly Gym, creating opportunities to "bump into" colleagues and talk with them. He can always say the right words at the right time to make the other person feel happy.
However, McCarthy, although he got along well in Congress, was not loved. An insider working in the House of Representatives once said to the American media: Everyone knows this sentence-McCarthy really cares only about himself.
In 2013, the American drama "House of Cards" started shooting, and kevinspacey fowler, the leading actor, found McCarthy to learn from the scriptures. McCarthy later admitted that he had taken Spacey to "experience life" in Congress. Spacey concluded: "The politicians on Capitol Hill are all bad actors."
·Stills of House of Cards.
A "failed country"
This time, it was Matt Gates, a Republican Congressman from Florida, who proposed to recall McCarthy.
Gates has a long history of not liking McCarthy.
In January this year, when McCarthy sprinted for the position of Speaker, Gates was the biggest obstacle.
After the mid-term elections, the Republican Party won 222 seats and successfully controlled the House of Representatives. As the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, McCarthy should have no suspense in taking over as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
However, the original "going through the motions" vote was deadlocked for four days, and McCarthy did not become the speaker until the fifteenth round of voting.
·McCarthy was still not elected after the eleventh round of voting.
In the fourteenth round of voting, at the critical moment when McCarthy was only one vote away from being elected, Gates once again cast an abstention vote.
Seeing Gates "spoiling the game", McCarthy turned pale with anger and got up and went to him to persuade him to change his position. But gates didn’t give in at all, and he held out his finger and choked with McCarthy.
·On January 6, 2023, on the fourth day of the election of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, McCarthy and Gates quarreled.
In the end, McCarthy was barely elected by one vote, which was behind the compromise he made by abandoning his dignity. One of the compromises is that McCarthy agreed to lower the threshold for initiating a motion to recall the Speaker of the House of Representatives-any member of the House of Representatives can propose it, instead of the previous requirement of obtaining the support of a majority of members of one party.
These compromises were called "the devil’s deal" by the Washington Post. Democratic Rep. McGovern sarcastically said: "McCarthy has given up everything, including dignity."
Wearing shackles, McCarthy became the speaker. I just didn’t expect that the speaker who was elected after 15 rounds of voting was dismissed after one round of voting.
It is worth mentioning that Gates, who constantly advocates putting "shackles" on McCarthy, comes from the far-right liberal party group.
This is a group composed of far-right Republican lawmakers who advocate conservatism and small government, and support budget cuts and decentralization of the House of Representatives. Of the 20 Republican lawmakers who opposed McCarthy’s election as Speaker, 19 were closely related to the Liberal Party. Of the eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy, six were members of the Liberal Party.
The number of liberal party members is not large, but the victory lies in unity. If more than 80% of the internal members are against a proposal, others will choose to follow the ticket.
·Before McCarthy took office on January 7th this year, Matt Gates made a speech against McCarthy on January 6th local time.
Lu Xiang believes that the Liberal Party actually inherited the "mantle" of the Tea Party.
Previously, a landmark event of Republican infighting occurred in 2015. At that time, the Tea Party forced john boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives and a Republican, to resign, and the situation was exactly the same as this one.
"The liberal party group is like a small group in the majority party, and it can also be understood as a small shareholder in a large company, and it is a decisive minority shareholder." Lu Xiang believes that the small party groups differentiated within the majority party can achieve the role of "the majority obeys the minority"-although you can’t do anything big, you can’t do anything.
It is difficult for the two parties to cooperate with each other, the internal struggles among political parties continue, and minority groups hold the decision-making power … The American media described the Republicans in the House of Representatives as a "failed country".
Before the new speaker took office, McCarthy temporarily appointed his confidant Patrick McHenry as the interim speaker. The BBC believes that whoever succeeds McCarthy will face a broken mess.
How to deal with the mess for the time being, mchenry’s new official took office, and issued a written order, demanding that former US House Speaker nancy pelosi vacate the office of the Capitol immediately, and that the office should return to the right path, "for the use of the Speaker only".
Editor-in-Chief: Qin Hong
Text Editor: Fang Ying
Author: global person Chen Jiali Mao Yufei
Source: vision china
Photo editor: Xu Jiamin