Republicans, whose party infighting has stymied the US House of Representatives for three weeks, tried on Monday to find consensus on a new speaker to lead the chamber and address funding needs for Israel, Ukraine and the federal government.
Nine speaker candidates, including No 3 House Republican Tom Emmer, made their pitches to fellow Republicans at a closed-door forum, and answered questions about how they would handle the job, which has become a flashpoint for factional strife between rightwing hardliners and more mainstream Republicans.
The field quickly dropped to eight when one of the candidates, Dan Meuser, used his presentation to announce he was withdrawing. He told reporters it was time for the party to get its act together.
“People are angry, people are frustrated, people are blaming us for the dysfunction, and they are kind of right. So we need to respond. We need to get this done,” Meuser said.
The House has been rudderless since 3 October, when former speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted. Infighting later derailed leadership bids by two would-be successors: No 2 House Republican Steve Scalise and prominent conservative Jim Jordan.
After Monday’s candidate forum, Republicans are due to meet at 9am ET on Tuesday to begin choosing a nominee behind closed-doors through a series of secret ballots.
Monday night, Representative Matt Gaetz told CNN he thinks the House GOP “might” have a speaker Tuesday night. “We had some great candidates in there. And we’ll go from this current group down to our designee and I hope it’s a productive endeavor,” the Florida Republican said leaving the GOP’s candidate forum.
McCarthy has endorsed Emmer, stressing his experience in working to marshal party votes on major legislation since January, when Republicans became the majority party. But Emmer could face an uphill battle if hardliners oppose him.
The leadership vacuum of the past three weeks has stymied congressional action, as Congress faces a 17 November deadline to avoid a government shutdown by extending federal agency funding, and a request from President Joe Biden to approve military aid for Israel and Ukraine.
House Republicans are concerned that none of the declared speaker candidates will be able to get the requisite 217 votes on the House floor needed to claim the speaker’s gavel.
Michael McCaul, the House foreign affairs committee chair, told CNN: “It’s going to be very difficult, but we have to get there.”
Any candidate nominated by the party conference can afford to lose no more than four Republicans when the full House votes. Meanwhile, the conference is split over spending cuts, Ukraine funding and other hot-button issues.
Jordan tried and failed three times to win a floor vote in the House. He had been endorsed by the former president Donald Trump, who is a clear favorite to win the party’s nomination to run again as president in 2024.
Democrats, who backed their own House leader Hakeem Jeffries for the speaker position, described Jordan as a dangerous extremist and opponents inside his own party were angered by a pressure campaign from his supporters that resulted in death threats.
Six of the eight new candidates for speaker – Jack Bergman, Byron Donalds, Kevin Hern, Mike Johnson, Gary Palmer and Pete Sessions – voted to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss to President Joe Biden on the day that Trump supporters assaulted Congress on 6 January 2021.
The two remaining candidates, Emmer and Austin Scott, did not vote to block the certification of the election results.
House Republicans have been embroiled in chaos all year. McCarthy needed an agonizing 15 votes to win the speaker’s gavel in January, and along the way had to make concessions that enabled a single member to force a vote for his removal.
That happened this month when eight Republicans forced him out after he passed legislation with Democratic support that averted a partial government shutdown.
Investors say the tumult has contributed to market turbulence and Biden has urged Republicans to sort out their problems.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
