Who will replace Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives?
Fifteen rounds of voting were needed to confirm Nancy Pelosi's replacement as speaker of the House of Representatives last January. Now, the task seems even more complicated after the vote, a chimera between clearly opposing conservative factions.. The historic dismissal of Kevin McCarthy as president of the Lower House after a motion of censure raises the question of who can fill his vacancy. No one, for the moment, has emerged as a clear and prominent figure, once McCarthy has ruled out running for the position again: “I will not run for president (of the House) again.. (…) I hope you know that every day I worked regardless of whether you underestimated me or not. I wanted to do it with a smile,” he said in a press conference at the Capitol.
Tim Burchett, congressman from Tennessee and one of Gaetz's allies, seemed to have it clear. “There are multitudes of people who can step up and do the job,” he said Tuesday without giving a name, the complete opposite of Kelly Armstrong, R-North Dakota, convinced hours before that more than 200 Republicans would vote the same way. again for McCarthy to continue. “Has anyone else said they want that position?” he wondered.
Eli Crane, representative of Arizona, did not have anyone in mind either, focused first on removing McCarthy from office and then on the task of finding his replacement.. “I don't like to buy the carriage before the horse,” he said, giving the impression that behind the rebellion there is no precise strategy to resolve the mess they have caused.
The US House of Representatives impeaches President Kevin McCarthy
The only one who at the moment seems to have it somewhat clearer is the strategist behind the coup against McCarthy, Matt Gaetz.. The congressman has leaned towards Steve Scalise, from Louisiana, the number two in the House of Representatives, conditioned by the leukemia he suffers from.. “I'm not going to skip Steve Scalise just because he has blood cancer,” he said Monday night, certain he had the votes to unseat McCarthy, as ultimately happened.
He also mentioned number three on the list, Tom Emmer, from Minnesota, with a reputation as a mediator within his party.. Gaetz highlighted the fact that he does not lie to them, something of which he has accused the former president of the Lower House of on several occasions.
Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York since 2015 and the fourth in the ranking among Republican legislators, a staunch defender of McCarthy – as she demonstrated in the debate prior to the vote – and a declared Trumpist, to the point of supporting the lies, has also sounded. of the former president on electoral fraud in 2020.
If she is not the chosen one, Tom Cole is another alternative. The representative from Oklahoma is the leader of the Congressional Rules Committee, with good agreement with both Democrats and Republicans. There is also the option of the current internal president of the House, Patrick McHenry, although it seems unlikely that he will run for the position after his rejection in the past. It's a hot potato that no one seems to want to take on at the moment.