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Among the oddities to unpack from a most unusual first day of the new Congress is that Rep. Kevin McCarthy might have seen something like this coming, back when the last Congress was just a few weeks old.
In the messy and ugly aftermath of Jan. 6, with Donald Trump impeached for a second time and Republican Party leaders considering the party’s future, the House GOP leader made the fateful decision to visit the disgraced former president at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
McCarthy’s calculation, that there was no path forward for Republicans that didn’t keep Trump close, may have been right based on intraparty realities. But the fallacy of finding unity under the Trump banner has now been thoroughly — and rather embarrassingly, for McCarthy and his allies and many other Republicans — exposed.
That happened Tuesday on what should have been a moment of triumph for McCarthy and his colleagues. Three roll-call votes for speaker not only failed to secure the speakership for McCarthy or anyone else but each time generated the most votes for the Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries — an unprecedented outcome that hints at the governing difficulties Republicans will have in the House from here.
McCarthy even had Trump himself in his corner in his bid for speaker. But he was unable to secure the job mainly because of holdouts among MAGA-loyal Republicans who have been railing against current GOP leadership in ways that echo Trump’s critiques of the establishment.
“We do not have the tools to stop the swamp from rolling over people,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said in nominating Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for speaker instead of McCarthy.
Jordan, for his part, publicly backed McCarthy in a speech just before Roy spoke.
