The Republican Party – and with it, the United States House of Representatives and the country itself – became a little more ungovernable this Thursday night with the resignation of Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise in his race to become speakera position in which he aspired to succeed Kevin McCarthy, dishonorably dismissed last week through the motion of Matt Gaetz, one of his own.
Scalise had defeated Jim Jordan (Ohio) in an internal party vote on Wednesday by a margin (113-99) that in the end proved slim. Since then, the congressman tried behind the scenes to convince his co-religionists to support him before calling a vote in the plenary session, in which he counted on the Democrats to speak out against him. He needed 217 yeses among the 222 seats that the conservative formation has in the lower house. Finally, everything indicates that out of helplessness, Scalise renounced his candidacy.
Several Republicans with a strident media profile, such as George Santos (New York) or Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia), had announced that they would not support him. In view of the fact that the bills did not quite work out for him, the congressman, who announced in August that he was suffering from multiple myeloma for which he is being treated with chemotherapy, put aside his aspirations to occupy the position of the third authority in the country at the end of the day and second in line for the presidency.
Until October 3, Scalise was Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives. He was also McCarthy’s deputy The Brief, who was president of Congress for only nine months, after his election last January, when it took him 15 votes to overcome the resistance of the hard wing of his party. Gaetz, one of its most conspicuous members, last week promoted a motion of no confidence to take away the gavel of speaker. Seven other Republicans and all the Democrats (208) present that day in the plenary session supported him in his destabilizing mission. It was a historic day: never in the 234 years of the Capitol had the dissident position in the House of Representatives been vacant.
That vote plunged the Capitol into chaos and the country into legislative paralysis. And that includes the impossibility of approving military aid for Israel, so the news from the Gaza Strip has added pressure to the institutional crisis in Washington. With the assistance program for Ukraine frozen, the date of November 17 is also hopelessly approaching, the day on which the extension signed with the Democrats to avoid a partial closure of the Administration expires. That was the compromise that cost McCarthy his job.
“No one is going to use me as an excuse to slow down our ability to get the House back to normal,” Scalise told reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday night following the announcement of his resignation. When asked if he planned to endorse Jordan for president, Scalise responded that he “hadn’t made any deals with anyone.” “I am sure that there will be many people who will now want to apply for the position; I just hope they don’t do it solely out of personal interest,” he added.
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In 2017, Scalise starred in a tragic chapter in the history of political infamy in Washington, when he was shot by a fanatic who opened fire on several members of Congress who were participating in a baseball game of the league that each year pits legislators who are fans of the sport. It took her months to recover from her injuries.
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