US House in chaos after Kevin McCarthy is defeated for speaker

Republican leader Kevin McCarthy failed again in his bid to be elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives on a day of political drama unprecedented in Congress in a century.

The House adjourned without a speaker on Tuesday night, the first time since 1923 that a first-round vote failed to elect a leader.

The commencement of a new Congress was meant to be a victory lap for the Republican Party, which had taken control of the lower chamber following the elections in November. Instead, McCarthy faced internal opposition and made history for all the wrong reasons.

So far, the California congressman has lost three consecutive votes for Speaker, and it’s unclear what his route to success will be when the House reconvenes on Wednesday. They will vote until someone obtains a majority.

Even if Mr McCarthy finds a way, commentators warn that the turbulence on the House floor foreshadows a difficult two years of conflict between moderate and right-wing Republicans.

Republicans narrowly won control of the House in November, thus McCarthy only needed a few votes to become Speaker. As a result, a group of staunch conservatives banded together to oppose his nomination.

Republican observers say the schism was a long time coming.

Mr McCarthy engaged into talks with his critics, who see him as too mainstream and power hungry, giving compromises in an attempt to earn their support. At one point, he reportedly agreed to amend House rules to make it easier to remove a sitting Speaker, effectively limiting his power.

“The fact that he was negotiating with Republicans at all made him look very, very weak, almost desperate,” a Republican lobbyist said.

On Tuesday, the futility of such strategy became evident.

Mr. McCarthy failed to reach the minimum 218 vote barrier three times in a row. Despite the fact that Republicans hold 222 seats, a group of 19 hard-right Republicans has banded together to oppose him. They oppose McCarthy on intellectual and personal reasons. But they also see an opportunity to use Republicans’ weak majority to push him to make additional concessions.

They even nominated Representative Jim Jordan to oppose him in one of the day’s most dramatic moments, just seconds after Mr Jordan himself nominated Mr McCarthy for Speaker.

Even though Mr Jordan, a prominent member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, asked Republicans to “unite around” Mr McCarthy in the third round of voting, 20 Republicans voted for Mr Jordan, denying Mr McCarthy victory yet again.

Meanwhile, Democrats remained united behind their party’s new leader, New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries.

A few couldn’t help but poke fun at their Republican colleagues’ miserable afternoon. One Arizona congressman, Ruben Gallego, tweeted that Democrats were “breaking out the popcorn,” and provided a photo of the delicacy as proof.

Political observers in Washington have begun to concoct several scenarios for how this could all end. Their forecasts to the BBC ranged from the plausible (Mr McCarthy holds out and winsut goes away severely weakened) to the totally plausible (Mr McCarthy holds out. And winsut walks away severely weakened) (he bows out and backs his second in command, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana).

One suggestion bordered on the fantastical (five Republicans decide to vote for Mr Jeffries, a Democrat, and deliver him control of the House).

McCarthy is currently “basically prisoner to one side of his party,” according to Ruth Bloch Rubin, a political scientist who studies polarization at the University of Chicago.

Mr McCarthy has sworn not to make any more compromises, but he may be forc to. He might be able to