The new Congress opens with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy grasping for his political survival
House Republicans must elect a speakerMcCarthy is in line to replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but he heads into the vote with no guarantee of success. He faces entrenched detractors within his own ranks. Despite attempts to cajole, harangue and win them over — even with an endorsement from former President Donald Trump — McCarthy has fallen short.
Typically it takes a majority of the House's 435 members, 218 votes, to become the speaker. With just a slim 222-seat majority, McCarthy can afford only a handful of detractors. A speaker can win with fewer than 218 votes, as Pelosi and Boehner did, if some lawmakers are absent or simply vote present.
Yet the prospect of holdouts causing havoc on Day One has launched a counter-offensive from Republicans who are frustrated that the detractors threaten the workings of the new Congress. McCarthy vowed to fight to the finish, going multiple rounds of painstaking floor votes -- a sight unseen in Congress“It would be nice if we can be ready to go on Jan. 3," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is set to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “But you know, if it doesn’t happen on the first ballot, that’s when that just pushes things back.”
McCarthy’s candidacy for speaker should have been an almost sure thing. Affable and approachable, he led his party into the majority, having raised millions of campaign dollars and traveled the country to recruit many of the newer lawmakers to run for office.
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