Ouster of McCarthy shows US division, 'demons dancing in riotous revelry'

When US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted on Tuesday from his leadership post, he became the shortest serving speaker since 1875. A handful of far-right Republicans joined Democrats and stripped the California Republican of the speaker's gravel with a 216-to-210 vote, after McCarthy worked with Democrats to pass a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown.

The ouster appears sudden, but is not surprising. It is no secret that some far-right Republicans hold radical ideas and refuse to cooperate with the Democrats in any form. Moreover, McCarthy's post was fragile from the very beginning. Matt Gaetz, who was among the Republicans to force a successful vote to vacate the chair on the House floor, repeatedly voted against McCarthy's bid for speaker in January. McCarthy ultimately secured the gavel after 15 rounds of voting over four days. To win the job, McCarthy had to agree to rules that made it easier to challenge his leadership. 

Democrats also viewed him as untrustworthy. He broke a May agreement on spending with President Joe Biden. Despite the fact that McCarthy worked with the Democrats to pause the US shutdown, he did not win the support of a single Democrat in Tuesday's vote. Democrats still believe that the presence of McCarthy, who in September ordered an impeachment inquiry into Biden, would hinder the political agenda of the Biden administration. They also believe that ousting McCarthy would trigger chaos within the Republicans and stymie the Republicans' moves against the Democrats. All in all, McCarthy had already become a "lame duck" speaker.

Zhang Tengjun, deputy director of the Department for American Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times that the ouster of McCarthy shows that against the backdrop of intensified bipartisan struggles, loyalty to the party triumphs everything, from the two parties' ability to make compromises and reach consensuses in the interests of the American public.

"It does not matter if one is the House speaker or not; what matters is which party he or she belongs to. This shows the extent to which the Democratic Party and the Republican Party divide," Zhang noted, adding that the US politics is now entering an era of "a host of demons dancing in riotous revelry."

McCarthy's ouster has been covered extensively by the US media, adding to the frenzy. But actually, it is the very representation of the US' so-called democratic politics. What normal democratic politics means is that the functioning of politics will not be affected by the removal of any single politician. But obviously, the ousting of McCarthy has plunged the House into chaos. And McCarthy's fate reflects how cooperating with the other party impacts political fortunes.

Wei Zongyou, a professor from the Center for American Studies, Fudan University, told the Global Times that from a deeper perspective, democratic politics is not all about elections, but about mutual compromise and restraint. 

"If the two parties cannot make compromises and exercise restraint, but turn different political opinions into an excuse to crusade against the other side or launch a life-and-death struggle, it may lead to a deadlock or even a civil war, and the only consequence is that the foundation of democratic politics will be destroyed," said Wei.

US democracy is facing a severe test as the 2024 presidential election looms. The Republicans have to tackle the current chaos and address this most recent leadership crisis. Without a powerful House speaker to bridge the divergences among the Republicans, it will affect the overall election strategy of the Republican Party and its advancement of its political agendas. 

The Democrats, sitting in the House chamber to watch the farce from afar, could laugh at the Republicans and accuse them of not being able to govern the country and being the reason behind ongoing political gridlock. But they also need to be aware that if the Republicans refuse to cooperate in any issue, the Biden administration's political agenda may also suffer. A chaotic situation next year does not necessarily bode well for the Democratic Party, and the outcome of the 2024 election remains uncertain and unpredictable.

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McCarthy Is Ousted as Speaker, Leaving the House in Chaos

A handful of far-right Republicans broke with their party and voted to remove Kevin McCarthy from his leadership post. He said he would not run again.

The House voted on Tuesday to oust Representative Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, a move without precedent that left the chamber without a leader and plunged it into chaos.

After a far-right challenge to Mr. McCarthy’s leadership, eight G.O.P. hard-liners joined Democrats to strip the California Republican of the speaker’s gavel. The 216-to-210 vote reflected the deep polarization in Congress and raised questions about who, if anyone, could muster the support to govern an increasingly unruly House G.O.P. majority.

“The office of speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant,” Representative Steve Womack, Republican of Arkansas, a McCarthy ally who presided over the chamber during the vote, declared after banging the gavel to finalize the result.

Video TRANSCRIPT

McCarthy Ousted as House Speaker in Historic Vote

The House voted to remove Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from the House speakership.

On this vote, the yeas are 216, the nays are 210. The resolution is adopted. Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. The office of Speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.

Soon after, Mr. McCarthy told Republicans behind closed doors that he would not seek to reclaim the post, ending a tumultuous nine months as speaker. Republicans said they would leave Washington until next week, with no clear path to finding a new speaker of the House.

“I don’t regret standing up for choosing governance over grievance,” Mr. McCarthy said at a news conference after the meeting. “It is my responsibility. It is my job. I do not regret negotiating; our government is designed to find compromise.”

It was the culmination of bitter Republican divisions that have festered all year, and capped an epic power struggle between Mr. McCarthy and members of a far-right faction who tried to block his ascent to the speakership in January. They have tormented him ever since, trying to stymie his efforts to keep the nation from defaulting on its debt and ultimately rebelling over his decision over the weekend to turn to Democrats for help in keeping the government from shutting down.

Before the vote, a surreal Republican-against-Republican debate played out on the House floor. Members of the hard-right clutch of rebels disparaged their own speaker and verbally sparred with Mr. McCarthy’s defenders, who repeatedly accused the hard-liners of sowing chaos to raise their own political profiles. Democrats sat and watched silently.

“He put his political neck on the line, knowing this day was coming, to do the right thing,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma and a McCarthy ally who sought unsuccessfully to kill the move to oust him.

“Think long and hard before you plunge us into chaos,” Mr. Cole implored the speaker’s detractors, “because that’s where we’re headed if we vacate the speakership.”

But Mr. McCarthy’s critics, led by Representative Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican from Florida, savaged him for what they characterized as a failure to wring steeper spending cuts out of the Biden administration and a lack of leadership.

“Chaos is Speaker McCarthy,” Mr. Gaetz declared. “Chaos is somebody who we cannot trust with their word.”

Most of the eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy had antagonized him ever since he became speaker. Along with Mr. Gaetz, they were: Representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana.

Only a few of them rose on the House floor ahead of the vote to list their grievances against Mr. McCarthy, chief among them that he had relied on Democratic votes to push through two bills they opposed — one to prevent the nation from defaulting on its debt for the first time in history and another, over the weekend, to avert a government shutdown.

“The speaker fought through 15 votes in January to become speaker, but was only willing to fight through one failed C.R. before surrendering to the Democrats on Saturday,” Mr. Good said, referring to a measure known as a continuing resolution for a stopgap spending bill. “We need a speaker who will fight for something, anything besides just staying or becoming speaker.”

A tense scene played out on the floor as lawmakers voted to oust the speaker the same way they vote to elect one: rising one by one from their seats on the House floor in an alphabetical roll call by conducted by the clerk.

¶ Before the vote, a surreal Republican-against-Republican debate played out on the House floor. Members of the hard-right clutch of rebels disparaged their own speaker and verbally sparred with Mr. McCarthy’s defenders, who repeatedly accused the hard-liners of sowing chaos to raise their own political profiles. Democrats sat and watched silently.

In the end, Mr. McCarthy was doomed by just eight members of his own party and a united caucus of Democrats, all of whom voted to dethrone him.

The vote left the House paralyzed until a successor is chosen. That promised to tee up another potentially messy speaker election at a time when Congress has just over 40 days to avert another potential government shutdown.

House Republicans met on Tuesday night after the vote to discuss how to move forward. Discussions on the future of the conference were being led by Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina. Mr. McCarthy had named Mr. McHenry first on a list of potential interim speakers in the event of a calamity or vacancy, but he does not have power to run the chamber — only to preside over the election of a new speaker.

There is no clear replacement for Mr. McCarthy, though some names reliably come up in conversations with Republicans, including Mr. McHenry and Mr. Cole as well as the No. 2 and No. 3 House Republicans, Representatives Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Tom Emmer of Minnesota.

“I think there’s plenty of people who can step up and do the job,” said Mr. Burchett, adding that he did not have anyone in mind.

But on Tuesday, Republicans were scattering to their districts around the country to regroup, with no clear strategy for how to move forward.

Mr. McCarthy did not answer questions from reporters after his ouster, striding quickly off the floor after receiving a barrage of handshakes and hugs from his allies. In the hours before the vote, Mr. McCarthy, an inveterate optimist who prides himself on never giving up, was characteristically sanguine, defending his decision to work with Democrats to avert a government shutdown, which precipitated the bid to remove him.

“If you throw a speaker out that has 99 percent of their conference, that kept government open and paid the troops, I think we’re in a really bad place for how we’re going to run Congress,” he said on Tuesday morning. In a closed-door meeting underneath the Capitol, he told Republicans he had no regrets about his speakership, and was interrupted several times by raucous standing ovations.

In the days leading up to the vote, Democrats had wrestled with whether to help Mr. McCarthy survive, or at least to stay out of the effort to oust him.

But their disdain for Mr. McCarthy ultimately overrode any political will they had to save him, and in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday morning, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, instructed fellow Democrats not to do so, citing Republicans’ “unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism.”

That meeting, which was billed as a listening session and strategy meeting to determine how Democrats would vote on Mr. Gaetz’s motion to remove Mr. McCarthy, quickly became an airing of grievances against the speaker.

The litany piled up: his vote to overturn the 2020 presidential election results after pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; his decision to renege on the debt limit deal he had brokered with President Biden in the summer to appease the rebels; his friendly relationship with former President Donald J. Trump; and his decision to open an impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden without evidence of wrongdoing.

“We’re not voting in any way that would help Speaker McCarthy,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, said ahead of the vote. “Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy, and why should they?”

The irony was that Mr. McCarthy had made those moves to placate the far-right flank of his party that ultimately ousted him.

“Speaker McCarthy has repeatedly chosen to weaken the institution by bending to extremists rather than collaborating across the aisle,” said Representative Derek Kilmer, Democrat of Washington. “He has inherited the chaos he has sown.”

Reporting was contributed by Luke Broadwater, Carl Hulse, Kayla Guo, Karoun Demirjian, Annie Karni and Robert Jimison.

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