McCarthy was also not elected Speaker of the House on the fifth ballot and the chaos continues in the Capitol abroad

They are nineteen people and they are being held hostage by American politics. Members of Congress from the far-right and conservative wing of the Republican Party refused to endorse their party’s leader’s nomination for Speaker of the House. This means that the United States will start the year without a parliament and that there are no bases in the Capitol.

Because as long as a president is not elected, all rules and procedures of the House of Representatives are suspended. Thus, the 435 members who will start a new term this week will not be sworn in. until the The dress to be worn which normally apply in corridors have been filed. Reporters and staffers shrug off with bare shoulders or a pair of jeans.

Usually, the leader of the majority faction almost automatically becomes the chief, the so-called Amplifiers. Voting on it is a formality. But the vote on Republican Kevin McCarthy’s nomination turned into an embarrassing political disaster. For the first time in a hundred years, the main faction failed to elect a president. On the first day he lost three votes, and a day later he again failed to gain a majority in the fourth and fifth rounds of voting.

The nineteen dissenting electors were very unpopular with their colleagues. Their demands are largely accepted by McCarthy, but they continue to thwart him, allegedly. In the corridors, according to party members, they are now called “Taliban 19”. On the first congressional day of the year, they managed to keep their ranks closed and eventually increased it to twenty votes against McCarthy.

These are the more right-wing and extreme members of the group. Most of them supported former President Trump in his attempts to stay in power illegally. Among them was, for example, Paul Gosar from Arizona, who was reprimanded by McCarthy for attending a meeting of white nationalists. He also shared an animated video on social media in which he attacks left-wing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword.

The insurrection in the Republican Party represents a partial resurgence of the Tea Party, a large conservative wing that attacked its party leaders in the 1920s and tried to get as close to the wheel of then-President Obama as possible. and a similar group of about thirty Republicans Puritans It now calls itself the Freedom Bloc. They represent an uncompromising anti-government viewpoint and want to push the party further to the right.

They have been called “parliamentary terrorists” by the party leadership, as they are said to be primarily interested in subverting the decision-making process in order to get their point across. It is entirely conceivable that non-voters would also interfere with other votes and paralyze Congress. Congressman Dan Crenshaw spoke of a “suicidal move” that would hit hard with voters. “This guarantees Biden’s re-election in 2024,” he warned his party. “This strategy is very stupid.”

Members of Congress must vote in order for the presidential candidate to obtain a majority. It was not clear on Wednesday evening how long that would take – it could take days. In 1855, the then Congress needed two months. Kevin McCarthy promised not to give up. He can try to convince the Democrats to vote for him in order to gain a majority. But it is also envisaged that another candidate will be introduced. In theory, this could become democratized.

On his online platform, Donald Trump called on allies to rally behind McCarthy. He wrote that Trump feared a Republican takeover in the House of Representatives could begin with a “very embarrassing defeat.” But the former president seems to have lost his influence. Then the rebel Republicans voted against McCarthy again.