Once-in-a-century embarrassment to GOP in US House: Why there is disunity among Republicans, and what happens next

The House will reconvene on Wednesday at noon (10.30 pm in India) to start the process anew. The outcome, however, remains uncertain as the Republicans continue to be in a deadlock.

What happened on Tuesday?

On Tuesday, the 118th Congress commenced as the 435 members of the House of Representatives gathered to elect a Speaker. Although the Republican party has the majority in the House with 222 members, McCarthy, who was vying for the job, couldn’t reach the required 218 vote threshold.

According to the BBC, a bloc of conservative Republicans split from their party and opposed McCarthy’s candidacy on “ideological and personal grounds” while backing other candidates, including Paul Gosar, a far-right Republican from Arizona, and Jim Jordan, a Republican representative from Ohio, who himself nominated McCarthy in a show of unity.

In the first two rounds of voting, McCarthy secured 203 votes. By the end of the third round, he had lost the support of another Republican member, Byron Donalds. Jim Jordan won 20 votes in the final round.

Meanwhile, the Democratic party, which has 212 members in the House, unanimously rallied behind their candidate, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. He won 212 votes in all the rounds of voting, and was elevated as House minority leader, the first black leader of either party in Congress. 52-yr-old Jeffries succeeds veteran Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, 82, who led House Democrats from 2003-23.

Why did McCarthy fail to gain enough support?

The failure of McCarthy, a Representative from California who had been House majority leader from 2014-19 and minority leader since then, to win his party’s support was not unexpected. A report in the BBC noted that a block of 19 hard right Republicans aligned with former president Donald Trump has openly opposed McCarthy for long because they see him as “insufficiently supportive of their movement”.

A report in The New York Times said that these GOP leaders seek changes in the functioning of the House. Before the Tuesday election, McCarthy had weeks-long negotiations with them and agreed to a wide range of demands, including “a rule that would allow five lawmakers to call a snap vote at any time to oust the Speaker”.

Tuesday’s developments in the House, however, showed his concessions were not enough.

So what happens now?

According to The NYT report, the rules of the House dictate that members must continue to take votes until someone secures the majority to win the Speakership.

While McCarthy remains the likeliest candidate to win as of now, the deadlock among Republican leaders too is likely to continue. A few lawmakers told the BBC that the hard right leaders would “never back down”. Although McCarthy has said that he will not negotiate any further with the rebels, there aren’t many options before him. The BBC report said that he might try to win them over “with plum committee assignments or new leadership roles”.

What does all of this mean for the Republican party?

Experts quoted in the American media interpreted the fractured support for McCarthy as another example of the growing disunity in the Republican party. The events of Tuesday were being seen as “part of the battle over the direction of the GOP between swing-district moderates and conservatives who have taken up the populist agenda of former President Donald Trump”, a Bloomberg report said.

Even if McCarthy ultimately prevails, the chaos will embolden the party’s hardliners and they might make his tenure extremely difficult by trying to prioritise their legislative demands. Also, the delay in electing the Speaker could affect the deadlines to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, the Bloomberg report added.

An analysis published in The NYT described the “embarrassing failure” of the Republicans as a “chaotic and historic debacle” that foretold coming difficulties for the party in the House.

“The paralysis underscored the dilemma facing House Republicans: No matter the concessions made to some of those on the far right, they simply will not relent and join their colleagues even if it is for the greater good of their party, and perhaps the nation,” the analysis said.

It said “Tuesday’s spectacle reflected that House Republicans have grown more skilled at legislative sabotage than legislative success, leaving the difficult business of getting things done to others.”