House lawmakers voted to adjourn for a second day on Wednesday evening without selecting a speaker in a historic defeat for Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and a sign of the total lack of unity that has taken over his caucus.
The chamber had adjourned for several hours after three votes transpired throughout the afternoon and each failed to result in the election of a speaker. Conservative opponents of Mr McCarthy showed no signs of relenting in their effort to block his election to the role, while at the same time there was little evidence of any consensus candidate emerging to unify both sides.
The former minority leader’s allies continued an unrelenting barrage of attacks aimed at their conservative colleagues, but appeared no closer to winning any of them over. The House voted by an extremely narrow margin to adjourn until noon on Thursday, though it remains totally unclear if Mr McCarthy will make any progress towards the 218-vote threshold needed to secure the speakership.
Rep Vern Buchanan of Florida, a Republican, seemed cautiously hopeful after the votes. In an interview he indicated that leaders of the two factions were “putting something together” but said that he wasn’t sure it would materialise before the chamber returned at noon Thursday.
Mr McCarthy too seemed optimistic, even as he put votes off until the next day.
“I think it's probably best let people work through some more. I don't think a vote tonight does any difference but vote in the future will,” he told a gaggle of reporters.
Should Mr McCarthy assume the title of Speaker of the House, his tenure will still be permanently marred by an astounding six defeats on the House floor — no leading candidate for a party that controls the House has lost on the first speaker’s election ballot in more than 100 years.
Both Democrats as well as supporters of Mr McCarthy sounded off on the Republican chaos after the House adjourned Wednesday evening.
“The longer this goes on, the more precarious the position is for the country,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned.
“It’s about egos, not about policy,” Rep Nancy Mace told The Independent. “They were asked point blank yesterday, what more do they want? They didn’t have an answer.”
Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, a political ally of some of the holdout GOPers, continued to assault their position as one without a plan for success as the evening concluded.
“Matt Gaetz is my friend and he'll always be my friend,” she said, referring to the Florida congressman who has been one of the most vocal opponents of Mr McCarthy. “But I'm not willing to go along with a plan that doesn't exist.”
The chaos that has engulfed the Republican caucus has elicited mockery and glee from their Democratic rivals, who have arrived at every vote as a unified wall supporting their newly-elected leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York. As a result, as of the most recent votes Mr Jeffries would actually only need five Republican defections for the GOP-controlled chamber to elect a Democratic speaker, while Mr McCarthy himself is 17 votes away.
Democratic lawmakers posed on Twitter with bags of popcorn as they celebrated the civil war that was raging on inside the divided GOP caucus, and on the House floor jeered their some of their Republican colleagues; one election conspiracy-supporting lawmaker, Scott Perry, even found himself on the receiving end of a shout deeming him a “traitor” during his remarks.
Republicans clearly felt the pressure from a swarm of negative headlines and comments from their rivals across the aisle. Numerous GOP members, including Kat Cammack of Florida, reprimanded their Democratic foes for not hiding their enjoyment of the deepening debacle, all the while attempting to portray the breakdown of their party’s unity and back-and-forth accusations of dishonesty as part of a “messy” but natural democratic process that for too long, they argued, had been kept behind closed doors.
Some of those same lawmakers, however, would go on to complain in different settings that the extended battle over the chamber’s leadership was preventing them from doing their jobs, including accessing classified materials as part of various committee work.
Lawmakers headed back to their DC abodes on Wednesday evening unsure if the status quo would break on Thursday or whether the House was headed into a third day of deadlocked votes and total inaction thanks to the GOP’s ongoing failure to reach consensus.
