Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted as House speaker yesterday after he failed to withstand a rebellion among far-right dissidents, as the House voted for the first time in history to remove its leader and entered a period of unpredictability and paralysis. McCarthy later came out to announce he would not seek the position again, setting up an expected intraparty battle for the position second in line to the presidency.
The 55th speaker of the House of Representatives was booted out in a shock vote brought by rebels in his own party who have seethed in the nine months since McCarthy narrowly quelled their attempts to block him and managed to claim the most powerful job in Congress.
Africa Today News, New York reports that no other speaker — a position second in line from the presidency in the federal hierarchy — has been ousted in US history.
Tuesday’s dramatic vote was the culmination of a bitter power struggle between McCarthy and hard-line Republican lawmakers that has persisted throughout his roughly nine months as speaker, after the Californian helped lead the GOP to a narrow majority in last year’s midterm elections.
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It was a step never before taken in the more-than-240-year history of the House of Representatives, pushed by an increasingly radicalized Republican faction that, emboldened since the rise of the tea party, has repeatedly shut down the government and led the country to the brink of a default on its debt. House Republicans now need to select a new leader and find consensus for funding the government by mid-November or again risk a shutdown.
In May he strode into a tense standoff with Democratic President Joe Biden over authorizing an extension of the national debt limit.
He struck an 11th-hour deal to avert a catastrophic US debt default, and while he hailed it as a victory for conservatives — and good governance — he faced a backlash from hardliners who said he had made too many concessions on spending cuts.
His limited engagement with Democrats was again the subject of the far-right’s ire last week when he used votes from the rival party to stave off a government shutdown.
The move defied hardliners — and Trump — who advocated harsh tactics in pursuit of forcing massive spending cuts and bringing down the country’s $31-trillion-plus debt burden.