It has been a very special week in the halls of Congress in Washington DC. A small group of Republican rebels is getting the country’s, and much of the world’s, attention in a strange piece of political theater. They refuse to choose a leader for their own party group – without getting through demands that, among other things, they can remove this leader again in a very simple way. The candidates they propose themselves will not be able to get a majority. They have received only 20 of 222 Republican votes in the 12 grueling polls held over the last few days. By the end of the last one, 14 of those 20 had gone over to his side. Seven remains to be convinced. On the second anniversary of the storming, there is no active Congress in the United States. Because without a leader, the House of Representatives cannot constitute itself and start work. Matt Gaetz (center) is one of the Republican rebels who would not bow to the will of the party in the election of a new leader of the House of Representatives. Photo: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / Reuters The politicians who don’t want to be politicians So what are these rebels trying to achieve? They say they have come to Washington to clean things up, and to hold politicians accountable and give power back to the people. It’s just that they themselves are also politicians. Now the world sits and watches in disbelief that the USA does not have a constituted national assembly. “This is the kind of thing that only happens in chaotic countries in southern Europe,” said a commentator on one of the TV channels yesterday. In the United States, the election of the President of Congress is almost always a formality. We have to go back to just before the American Civil War in 1859 to find anything like this week’s voting marathon. Voted for Donald Trump On this day two years ago, something Americans didn’t think could happen happened. Furious protesters broke through police barricades and smashed windows to enter the congressional building. Inside, they vandalized and took tragicomic photos in front of historical paintings and statues. A snake legs on the table inside the office of Congress Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Others hunted politicians who escaped through the tunnels in the basement of the congress complex. Still others made mischief on the lectern in the congress hall. Protesters pictured in the middle of Congress, with the so-called QAnon shaman, Jake Angeli, at the front. Photo: JIM LO SCALZO / EPA A couple of the politicians sitting in that room now participated in the planning of what happened together with then President Donald Trump. Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida urged his supporters to be outraged. He was criticized for that by party colleague Kevin McCarthy. Until the new year, Kevin McCarthy was the Republican Party’s minority leader in the House of Representatives, one of the two chambers of Congress. Now McCarthy will have the leadership position, given that after the mid-term elections in November the Republicans managed to capture the majority there, while the Democrats retain control of the Senate. Yesterday, Gaetz voted for former President Donald Trump as the new leader of the “house”. It is entirely possible to vote for someone who is not elected to that position, but Trump only got one vote. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are among the radical right-wing rebels in the Republican Party. In the leadership election, they have split sides, Green has chosen to support the party’s candidate Kevin McCarthy, while Gaetz refuses. Photo: JONATHAN ERNST / Reuters Kevin McCarthy humiliated Donald Trump himself is urging the Republicans to elect Kevin McCarthy as Congress leader. But the rebels in the party will not listen to Trump this time. McCarthy is an ordinary politician, who for many of the 16 years he has sat in Congress has dreamed of becoming a leader. He has turned his cape to the wind and steered towards this moment, even though he knows that several of his party colleagues who have been Congress leaders in the past have had a tough time because of the division in the party. Kevin McCarthy was the Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives in the previous Congress. Now he is trying to become a leader, but is struggling to bring more of his own with him. Photo: Julio Cortez / AP Kevin McCarthy has allowed himself to be humiliated and weakened politically even before he is possibly elected. After the storming two years ago, he first criticized Donald Trump and gave him part of the blame for what had happened. He then lashed out at Matt Gaetz and some of the others on the extreme right wing of the party. But McCarthy quickly realized that such behavior would not get him any leadership position. Then just a few weeks later he traveled to visit Donald Trump in Florida and became friends with the president again. He realized that he would not retain his position in the party without Trump’s support. But now this support does not seem to save McCarthy from his own. Nancy Pelosi is considered one of the strongest leaders of the House of Representatives ever. Now the Republicans are struggling to choose who will take over from her. Together with the new Democratic group leader Hakeem Jeffries, she looks at the chaos of her opponent. Photo: Alex Brandon / AP Steve Bannon’s dream Someone who likes what he sees now is Trump’s former chief adviser Steve Bannon. He has been sentenced to prison for showing contempt for Congress, but has appealed, and still makes the podcast The War Room. In the podcast, he urges Republicans to keep fighting McCarthy. Steve Bannon’s project has long been to fight against what he calls “the deep state”, the interaction between politicians, bureaucrats and financial actors. During Trump’s reign, he visited both Italy and Hungary to try to strengthen politicians who had similar projects to Donald Trump. Steve Bannon leaves the courthouse during his October 2022 trial. Bannon was charged with contempt of Congress. Photo: Jose Luis Magana / AP Now he praises the Republican rebels and makes the following appeal to them: – Why not call on Trump in this situation? If you were in a room negotiating the debt ceiling and the capital crisis, who would you rather have leading those negotiations than Trump? Bannon asks in the podcast. New videos with pictures of what happened when the Congress was stormed on January 6, 2021. The police fought harder than first thought, and the mob was more violent than first thought. Weapons in the hall? On this dark day for American democracy, politicians must go straight from a commemoration to new polls to try to elect a leader. According to several congressional sources news has spoken to, Kevin McCarthy has given in to some of the demands of the 20 rebels in the party. They want to be able to manage his job to the greatest extent possible, and the fear of many in the party group is that he will give in to so many demands that it becomes almost impossible for him to manage. Because if this assembly of politicians can’t even elect a leader from their own party, how are they supposed to be able to pass anything? The American people have very low confidence in Congress as an institution. Several of the rebels, who are now getting a lot of attention in the live broadcasts from the voting chaos, are using this attention to say they want to clean up and to ask their followers for more money. It is likely that what is happening now will only cause the contempt for politicians to increase. Because before a congress leader is elected, the politicians cannot be sworn in and start their work. One thing, however, the Republican majority has already managed to achieve: After the storming on January 6, metal detectors were set up outside the doors of the congressional hall to prevent anyone from bringing weapons and dangerous objects inside. These were taken away on Tuesday. Among other things, following demands from one of the radical republicans who have opposed the election of McCarthy. One of the Republican party rebels, Lauren Boebert, elected from Colorado, has fought to remove the security measures inside the Congress building. Photo: LEAH MILLIS / Reuters Lauren Boebert has been fined for refusing to go through the metal detectors earlier. She demands to be able to freely carry weapons inside the congress hall. When it is two years since the Congress was stormed, it seems easier to get into both the congress building and the hall than it has been for a long time. Follow the development in news’s News Center:
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Disdain for politicians in the US reaches new heights on the anniversary of the storming of Congress – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
