“What is our aim?... Victory, victory at all costs, victory despite all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” As Sir Winston Churchill once said, survival is meaningless without a victory to certify a secure position in one’s possession: same logic proves to be relevant, if not, axiomatic in politics. In democratic states, a decisive yet almost always divisive matter as elections often renders contestants to surrender as it is the only option available for an unsustainable but definite survival in the short run. Such was seen in the plenary session held on the 6th of January 2023 when Republican contestant, Kevin McCarthy attained his long-awaited victory as the Speaker of the House with a tiresome number of trials amounting up to 15.
On January 6th, 2023, the 118th congressional election was held for the voting of the House of Speakers. Hakeem Jeffris from the Democratic party and Kevin McCarthy from the Republican party were two contestants running for the House of Speaker in a poll of 434 (U.S. House Speaker). Republican seats were, in total, 222 seats which are 10 seats more than what the Democratic party had. Since the voting required the winner to hold more than half of the whole poll, the voting continued until McCarthy was elected by the abstaining of 6 voters and reduced the whole poll to 428. Until then, the standoff continued for the 15th vote. To attract the support of 9 far-right voters, McCarthy massively revised his original plan to end the standoff (McCarthy proposes). As NBC reports, it is the first time in 100 years that a vote for House speaker has gone to multiple ballots (House Republicans). The fight is over with a bitter surrender.
The reason for such a dragging process was due to some of the hesitant voices within the Republican party which marked a stark contrast with the Democratic party voting for Hakeem Jeffris in unison. Up until the 15th re-voting, McCarthy did not win the majority votes he needed from the far-right supporters – who are known more by the name of ‘Freedom Caucus’ – known to avidly support Trump’s policy including his most prominent MAGA (Make America Great Again) belief (“What is the Freedom Caucus?”).
Perhaps the dividing crack of the Republican party has stretched its gap since the pivotal end of the 2021 United States Capitol Riot. With a U.S. capitol occupied by a group of avid Trump supporters and the deniers of an allegedly “rigged” election, the most puzzled to respond was the Republican party. So far, the Republican party has never yet encountered such an extreme event in their hands as the U.S. capitol building was, in a literal sense, burning. This is where a sprout of division is planted to grow as salient as it is now in the McCarthy election. Though the Republicans’ enthusiastic support for Trump has not yet crumbled to the ground – as seen in the 68% response rate from the Republicans who disagree with the notion that the riot was a threat to democracy – it did severely damage the party members’ belief in Trumpism (“Most voters say”). Senate leader Mitch Mcconnell called Jan. 6 “a dark day for Congress and our country” after “the seat of the first branch of our federal government was stormed by criminals who brutalized police officers.” Here, it is worth mentioning that Kevin McCarthy condemned the participants of the riot in his broadcast with Fox News while the Freedom Caucus generally maintained their adamant support for Trump. The riot was the prism to split Trumpism into each reflected section, leaving an explicit political spectrum within the Republican party.
Though the Freedom Caucus consists of merely 53 seats in the House of Republican conference and the same in the House of Representatives, its power however remains effectively managed and well-controlled. To settle a disagreement, Freedom Caucus’ action was consistent throughout its existence in the Republican party. For instance, the rejection of the American Health Care Act in 2017. The American Health Care Act, as the name suggests, was a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act to ameliorate the staggering public health cost. Due to a strong objection from the Freedom Caucus members, the bill was withdrawn from the Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan (House Republicans withdrew). Here, a strong objection can be a sign of understanding the prospects of Kevin McCarthy’s years for the Speak of the House. As Kevin McCarthy is one of the supporters in the Republican party for a rectification of the U.S. national healthcare system, expecting strong opposition from the Freedom Caucus is no surprise. What is vital is to cope with the opposition as every politician should rightly be accustomed to.
Nevertheless, experts view this win as a political surrender to the voices of the far-right Republicans, setting a difficult tone for McCarthy to juggle between the Freedom Caucus represented by far-rightist beliefs, and the Centre-right Republican Governance party. Even before his start in office, McCarthy already accepted numerous political U-turns in the way for the immediate support of the Freedom Caucus, and a prospect for the Republican party is now held in probability: either McCarthy loses control with an encroaching grip of Trumpism–or not.