January 7, 2023: Kevin McCarthy, a Republican representing the 20th District of California, including his hometown of Bakersfield, is elected the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives -- on the 15th ballot.
NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.
Electing the Speaker, and swearing in the members of the House for a new term, usually happens on January 3 of odd-numbered years, although the outgoing Congress may pass a law setting up a different date, for various reasons. This time, the 1st ballot was, indeed, held on January 3.
But it usually only takes 1 ballot to do it: The members of the majority party choose their nominee, and he gets more votes than the person that the members of the minority party choose as their nominee, and that's it. This time, the majority party couldn't agree.
McCarthy, born in Bakersfield in 1965, was first elected to Congress in 2006, and joined the Republicans' House Leadership after the 2010 elections, so he was on the rise quickly. He became House Majority Whip, the Number 3 ranking in the majority party. He became House Majority Leader, the Number 2 man, in mid-2014, when Eric Cantor of Virginia lost his primary for re-election and resigned early. When the Democrats regained control of the House in 2018, he became House Minority Leader, following the retirement of former Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.
He was determined to bring his Party back into the majority, as he despised the Democrats' House Leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. On August 1, 2021, he was the keynote speaker of the 44th annual Statesmen's Dinner hosted by the Tennessee Republican Party in Nashville. With Pelosi leading the House, Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York as Senate Majority Leader, and Democrat Joe Biden as President, McCarthy called America a "country in crisis" during his speech, and said, "I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel... It’ll be hard not to hit her with it."
He was cheered by the 1,400 people in attendance. But Hakeem Jeffries of New York, then the Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus (their Number 3), wrote on Twitter, "Violence against women is no laughing matter. Apologize." McCarthy did not apologize. His statement looked worse when, 8 days before the next Congressional election, an assailant broke into Pelosi's San Francisco home, shouting "Where's Nancy?" and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer.
McCarthy made bold predictions about a "red wave" that would sweep the Republicans into control of both houses of Congress, guided by revulsion against the Democrats on the issues of crime and inflation.
What he did not anticipate was that, guided by revulsions against the Republicans for standing by disgraced former President Donald Trump, anger at the Supreme Court's overturning of abortion rights, and generally being okay with the way that Biden, Pelosi and Schumer were running the country, the red wave turned into a trickle. The Republicans barely took control of the House, with only a 5-vote majority; and the Democrats actually gained 1 seat in the Senate.
And to rub it in further, Pelosi announced her retirement as Speaker, although she would remain in the House. So the Democrats elected an all-younger leadership, and it would be Jeffries, as the new House Minority Leader, who would be handing the gavel over to whoever the Republicans chose as Speaker.
Except that there was no guarantee that it would be McCarthy. There were 19 Republicans in the House, all of them deniers of the 2020 Presidential election result, who had said they would never vote for him for Speaker under any circumstances. Not that they would cross over and vote for Jeffries, a black man from Brooklyn; but that they would try to elect one of their own. Since they didn't have the numbers to do that, they decided to extract concessions from McCarthy: Choice places on House Committees, promises to do witch-hunt investigations of Biden and other Democrats, and so on.
And so, on January 3, when the House gathered to elect its Speaker, all the Democrats voted for Jeffries, and not all the Republicans voted for McCarthy. Jeffries finished 1st, but not with a majority. McCarthy finished 1st among Republicans, but not with a majority. A 2nd ballot was conducted that day, with the same result.
The next day, the New York Daily News, citing McCarthy and the newly-elected George Santos, who told some absolutely ridiculous lies to win a district on New York's Long Island, had a front page that summed up the situation.
Many observers, including myself, remembered an episode of the NBC drama The West Wing, set at a deadlocked Democratic Convention, with political operative Leo McGarry (played by John Spencer) telling the campaign managers of the 3 remaining Presidential candidates, none of whose bosses could get a majority of delegates but none would give in, "One night of this is great theater. Two, and we look like idiots."
But on that day, January 4, McCarthy moved into the Speaker's office, prematurely, ahead of time, without authority. He followed George W. Bush's path after the 2000 election: Act like it's settled, and you've already won, and people will think you did. They didn't think so, and the word "squatting" came to mind.
By the end of the day, there had been 6 ballots for Speaker, and McCarthy still hadn't won. Trump released a statement telling those Republican holdouts, who had grown to 21, that they were embarrassing themselves, and that they should stop it, and vote for McCarthy. But Trump no longer had control over the Frankenstein monster he'd built.
I saw someone write on Facebook, "At this pace, Kevin McCarthy is gonna have the first pick in this year's NFL draft." When he became 0-for-9 on January 5, I was reminded of the title character's unexcused absences in the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off:
There was a 10th ballot on January 5. He lost that, too. It was now the longest balloting process for the Speaker since 1855 -- before the American Civil War. I began to think of a song by Led Zeppelin: "How Many More Times?" On January 6 -- 2 years to the day after the insurrection that failed to prevent the certification of Biden's election as President -- he fell to 0-for-12. I thought of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and thought, At what point does he just say there are five lights?
The ballots kept coming, and McCarthy still couldn't get a majority. So he began "giving away the store." He made concession after concession to the "Never Kevins," including the scrapping of the rule that said that it would take 5 Representatives to file a motion to remove the Speaker: Now, it would take only 1. In other words, any single member of the House, including some of the craziest right-wingers ever to sit in it, had the chance to extort McCarthy.
At this point, Mike Rogers of Alabama couldn't take it any longer, and walked over toward Gaetz, and was physically restrained by Richard Hudson of North Carolina. A 14th ballot was taken, and still, Gaetz wouldn't give in. Meanwhile, every time a ballot began, and a Democrat nominated Jeffries, a chant of "Ha-keem! Ha-keem! Ha-keem!" went up.
Finally, shortly after Midnight on January 7, a 15th ballot was held. Gaetz and the last 5 holdouts voted "Present," rather than for any particular challenger. That meant that McCarthy only had to get a majority of those who actually voted for a candidate, and he now had it, 215-214, instead of the 218 he thought he would need.
As of this writing -- the date on the post reads "January 7, 2022," but I'm backdating all entries after calendar year 2022 to that year, so all entries for a day of the year are together -- the general public still does not know what McCarthy offered Gaetz to get him, and the others he was leading, to change their votes to "Present," but he got it. McCarthy had finally been elected the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
No Speaker has ever had so little leverage. Ali Vitali of MSNBC said that, now, every single Republican member can hold whatever McCarthy wants to do hostage for their own purposes. One Facebook poster I saw wrote, "Kevin McCarthy sold his soul and only got a t-shirt that says I'VE BEEN TO MAR-A-LAGO." (Trump's Florida estate.)
And then, before handing over the gavel, Jeffries, as the House rules allowed him to do, made a statement. And it was a fantastic speech, revving the Democrats up, making him look like exactly what they'd hoped he'd be: The man who should be the Speaker of the House. He handed the gavel over to McCarthy, whose speech was quiet and conciliatory, befitting someone who was in no position to "spike the football."
And then, January 10, the House Republicans, "led" by McCarthy, voted to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics. Now, who's trying to "defund the police"?
UPDATE: On October 3, angry at McCarthy's negotiations to keep the federal government funded, Gaetz filed a motion to vacate the Speaker's office, and it passed. The joke was too easy, and came quickly: "If you turn up your base too loud, it can destroy your speaker."
McCarthy was Speaker for just under 9 months -- almost the average length of a human pregnancy. And yet, these Republicans, who proudly declare themselves to be "pro-life," gave McCarthy Speakership a late-term abortion.
It took 22 days for the Republicans to agree on a new Speaker, finally electing Mike Johnson of Louisiana.
*
January 7, 2023 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. Two games were played in the NFL. The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Las Vegas Raiders, 31-13 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. And the Jacksonville Jaguars beat the Tennessee Titans, 20-16 at TIAA Bank Stadium in Jacksonville.
There were 5 games played in the NBA:
* The Chicago Bulls beat the Utah Jazz, 126-118 at the United Center in Chicago. Zach LaVine scored 36 points.
* The Dallas Mavericks beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 127-117 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. Luka Dončić scored 34.
* The Boston Celtics beat the San Antonio Spurs, 121-116 at the AT&T Center (now the Frost Bank Center) in San Antonio. Jason Tatum scored 34.
* The Orlando Magic beat the Golden State Warriors, 115-101 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Sacramento Kings, 136-134 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. LeBron James led all scorers on the day with 37.
And there were 8 games in the NHL:
* The New Jersey Devils beat the New York Rangers, 4-3 at the Prudential Center. Damon Severson scored the winning goal, 2:13 into overtime.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the St. Louis Blues, 5-4 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.
* The Seattle Kraken beat the Ottawa Senators, 8-4 at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa.
* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-1 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
* The Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 4-3 in a shootout at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus.
* The Colorado Avalanche beat the Edmonton Oilers, 3-2 at Rogers Place in Edmonton. Cale Makar scored the winning goal with 2:51 left in overtime.
* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Vegas Golden Knights, 5-1 at the T-Mobile Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada.
* And the Boston Bruins beat the San Jose Sharks, 4-2 at the SAP Center in San Jose.
No comments:
Post a Comment