The Republicans are tearing each other apart and… the Democrats are rubbing their hands. For the party of Donald Trump, George Bush and Ronald Reagan, the year could not have started worse. After the short and disappointing victory of the Grand Old Party in the legislative elections of midterms in November – very far from the “red wave” hoped for and announced by the right – the elected Conservatives were preparing to designate on Tuesday January 3 the “Speaker” of the House of Representatives – the equivalent of our President of the National Assembly . A super prestigious position, third in the American protocol order. It was to be both a formality and a celebration for which the families of the elected officials, who had come from the four corners of the country, had put on their best clothes, in order to attend the swearing in of their loved one, scheduled immediately after the election of the Speaker.
Nineteen MPs even more extremist than Trump
But, hell, nothing went as planned. Even before the inauguration of the parliamentary session, the Republican Party was shaken by the case of George Santos, a 34-year-old mythomaniac who was elected in New York State. Between Christmas and the New Year, that is to say before taking office, the press revealed that the a priori brilliant young man had lied on almost the whole line: his social origins, the names of his employers (Goldman Sachs… who has never heard of him), that of the universities he would have attended (Harvard, so-called…), his alleged successes as a businessman, his religion (he claims to be Jewish). In short, his entire CV.
It was just an appetizer. And the beginning of a sequence horribilis. Because the election of the Speaker is a far more serious matter. Since Tuesday, the Republicans, although in the majority in the House, have been unable to agree on the name of their leader. Nineteen deputies even more extremist than “king” Trump refuse to propel Republican Kevin McCarthy, who was preparing to succeed Democrat Nancy Pelosi, to the perch. A falot character, the person concerned is relatively unpopular within his own formation. After three rounds of voting on Tuesday, the vote was adjourned to the following day. And yesterday, again: three rounds did not allow McCarthy to obtain the necessary 218 votes. Never seen.
Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, in Washington on June 17, 2021
© / afp.com/ALEX EDELMAN
We must see in this farce the involuntary hand of Donald Trump. Not only did the former president sow discord among Republicans by pushing the wackiest candidates (and especially the most Trumpist) to oppose others from his own camp during the midterms, but his permanent agit-prop is, in addition, the reason for the historically low score and the ric-rac victory of the Republicans in the November legislative elections. Far from the hoped-for red wave, the Republican Party won only 222 seats, only four more than the majority (218 votes) necessary for the election of a Speaker.
“If the victory of the Grand Old Party (GOP, the Republican Party) had been wide, we would not even be talking about these nihilistic cranks who have been keeping the United States in suspense for two days and putting on a show for the sole pleasure to exist and to be on Fox News”, explains the specialist of the United States Françoise Coste, shaking her head. “This group of nineteen unmanageable people, who have no interest in legislative work, could not have weighed if the Republicans had had 240 elected officials,” adds this biographer of Ronald Reagan. And she concludes: “As former Republican Speaker (2011-2015) John Boehner writes in his recent autobiography, these are ‘legislative terrorists’ who make Donald Trump look reasonable.” Moreover, the latter, who declared himself a candidate for the White House in November, supports the candidacy of Kevin McCarthy and would not like to pass for the dynamiter of the party – which he is nevertheless indeed.
The trouble for the Republicans is that they are doomed to get along. The American Constitution does not provide for the dissolution of the House of Representatives, as is the case in France for the National Assembly. They must either find an agreement around McCarthy, or choose a replacement – we are talking about Steve Scalise, elected from Louisiana – or, finally, continue to put on a show in Washington which, it is true, has seen others. .