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Nearly two weeks after he was ousted, Kevin McCarthy’s name has not yet been replaced above the door of the office of Speaker of the US House of Representatives in Washington.
McCarthy was removed from the post after a rebellion by a small number of hard-right members on his own side. But in a party beset with factionalism, feuds and grudges, Republicans have so far been unable to agree on who should succeed him.
Republicans will try again on Tuesday to elect a new speaker and reopen House of Representatives.
The Republican nominee, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, on Monday appeared to be inching towards securing sufficient support to win. However, it is unlikely to be easy and could take a series of votes in the chamber if it happens at all.
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[ How speaker Kevin McCarthy was overthrown thanks to an increasingly chaotic Republican Congress ]
[ The Irish Times view on the removal of Kevin McCarthy: Washington’s dysfunction goes on ]
Jordan has managed to get a number of critics who said last week that they would never support him to change their minds.
But following an internal meeting on Monday night he acknowledged: “We’ve got a few more people to talk to, listen to.”
Republican politicians went home to their constituencies for the weekend and over that time there appears to have been a campaign at grassroots level and among their colleagues on the right of the party to encourage them to back Jordan.
It has also been reported that Fox News anchor Sean Hannity was working behind the scenes to promote Jordan as the next speaker.
However, it remains to be seen whether this will be sufficient to secure the votes he needs to win on a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.
In the meantime, in the absence of a speaker, the House of Representatives has remained effectively frozen. It cannot pass legislation – for example to authorise aid packages – at a time of growing conflict in the Middle East as well as the war in Ukraine.
The House also has to pass a budget for next year. And if this does not happen by mid-November, the US will again face a government shutdown.
Jordan, a right-wing conservative who is backed by former president Donald Trump for the role of speaker, is a polarising figure in the party.
He is also distrusted by Democrats. Some describe him as an “insurrectionist” who voted to reject the 2020 election results in the states of Arizona and Pennsylvania and defended those who attacked the US Capitol on January 6th 2021.
His former Republican colleague Liz Cheney – who served on the House committee that investigated the January 6th attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Trump – also hit out at Jordan last week.
“Jim Jordan was involved in Trump’s conspiracy to steal the election and seize power; he urged that [former vice-president Mike] Pence refuse to count lawful electoral votes,” Cheney wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“If [Republicans] nominate Jordan to be speaker, they will be abandoning the constitution. They’ll lose the House majority and they’ll deserve to.”
However,Jordan is strongly supported by conservatives and those on the right of the Republican Party.
A founder member of the freedom caucus in the party, Jordan was described as “a legislative terrorist” several years ago by the former Republican speaker John Boehner, who quit before a revolt by the hard right similar to that which unseated McCarthy.
Jordan later became an ally of McCarthy who appointed him as chair of the House judiciary committee when Republicans won a narrow majority last November. He is one of the Republican committee chairs in the House who are leading the charge to investigate Joe Biden and his family over allegations of corruption.
Jordan won the party’s nomination for speaker last week. But within an hour or so about 55 Republican members indicated that they would not back him when the formal vote for speaker was put forward for a vote on the House floor – generating further chaos within the party.
This came a day after Steve Scalise, a Louisiana congressman who was the first choice of the Republicans to be its nominee for speaker, withdrew after it became apparent that insufficient members of the party in the House were prepared to rally behind him.
The problem for Republicans is that their majority in the House is so small that it gives great leverage to any group that wants to cause trouble for the leadership.
Any candidate for speaker, for example, can only afford to lose four votes if all opposition Democrats line up against him or her.
To secure the speakership a candidate needs 217 votes in the chamber. But given the infighting in the Republican ranks this has proved elusive.
Some critics have argued that electing Jordan to be the next speaker would essentially mean rewarding a small number of Republicans who rebelled against McCarthy or blocked Scalise.
But if Jordan is defeated on Tuesday, the Republicans will be back to square one, with the House remaining closed and no certainty as to who could break the deadlock.
One Republican politician was reported to have said last week at a closed-door session: “You know, you could put Jesus Christ up for speaker of the House and he still wouldn’t get 217.”
However, on Monday Jordan said momentum was moving in his direction. He said he would bring the vote for speaker to the floor of the full House even if he did not have sufficient pledges of support to win in advance.
Unlike in the internal party vote last week, on Tuesday Republican members of the House who are opposed to Jordan becoming speaker will have to do so in public.
And some Jordan supporters at the weekend warned those thinking of voting against him that conservative voters in their constituencies might not be too impressed if they did so.
However, a number of Republican politicians on Monday indicated that they still did not want Jordan to take the speaker’s gavel. Some said they intended to vote for McCarthy.
Jordan may not win on the first ballot on Tuesday. However, his strategy may be to hold several successive votes in a bid to essentially grind down his opponents.
Jordan and his backers will be fully aware that it took McCarthy 15 votes in the chamber in January before he finally got the numbers to win.