Republican leader Kevin McCarthy appeared headed toward a historic defeat in first-round voting Tuesday to become House speaker, sending the new Congress into a tangle as conservative colleagues opposed his leadership.
after two years of a Democratic Party control of both houses of Congress.
A new generation of Trump-aligned Republicans led the opposition to McCarthy. They don’t think he is conservative enough or tough enough to battle Democrats. It’s reminiscent of the last time Republicans took back the House majority, after the 2010 midterms, when the tea-party class ushered in a new era of hardball politics, eventually sending Speaker John Boehner to an early retirement.With just 222 GOP seats, McCarthy could afford to lose only a handful of their votes.
A sizable but less vocal group of McCarthy supporters started theirs own campaign, “Only Kevin,” as a way to shut down the opposition and pledge their support only to him. Without a speaker, the House cannot fully form — naming its committee chairmen, engaging in floor proceedings and launching investigations of the Biden administration.
McCarthy’s candidacy for speaker should have been an almost sure thing. He led his party into the majority, raising millions of campaign dollars and traveling the country to recruit many of the newer lawmakers to run for office.
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