On October 4th, 2023, six people in the United States House of Representatives removed the man second in line to the presidency, and one of the most powerful men in the American government. Kevin McCarthy will go down as the second shortest serving speaker of the House in US history, second only to Michael C. Kerr who died in 1875 from consumption. You may be asking, how on earth did this happen? Well in order to answer that, we have to analyze the how and why McCarthy fell from the height of the Republican
party to a footnote in a history textbook.
This fall from grace highlights the hidden civil war inside the republican party that just went thermo-nuclear. The battle lines were drawn after the disastrous results of the 2022 midterms; when the fated red wave turned out to be more of a ripple. The democratic party held onto the Senate with the Republican party only gaining the majority in the House of Representatives by six seats. The Republicans were torn as to what the results seemed to indicate. To the traditional Republicans, it was a shot across the bow from the electorate, signaling that they had fallen too far for the MAGA message. Unsurprisingly, those most loyal to the former president, Donlad Trump, had different ideas. The pillars of the MAGA movement saw the failure snatched from the jaws of victory as a clear indication they hadn’t gone far enough.
The lines were drawn, and the first shots were fired when after months of anticipation on the 11th hour, McCarthy passed a short measure stop-gap bill. This bill kept the federal government funded in order to avoid a shutdown on September 30th, 2023. This compromise with the Biden administration was heresy to many of the MAGA Republicans. As a result of the bill, a vote led by Florida representative, Mat Gaetz, was launched to remove the speaker.
The key question that remained unresolved until the very moment the results of the vote were announced was how the Democratic caucus was going to react. Would they stand the course or roll the dice with a removal? McCarthy reportedly felt confident going in, with some sources reporting that he had assurances from democratic leadership that they would back him. This assurance, in conjunction with the support of the majority of Republicans, he was sure he would survive as leader. However, the Democratic party was not as pliable as once believed, with the reasoning ranging from broken deals McCarthy promised to uphold, or simply as an expression of disapproval with the entire Republican party. Whatever the reason may be, the results speak for themselves as every single democratic representative voted in unison to remove the speaker.
This incredibly dramatic move meant that with the vote of only the six Republicans out of 216 in the chamber, Kevin McCarthy became the first-ever speaker to be removed, and the stage was set for an era-defining political fight for the future of the Republican party.
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