The House Republican majority is stuck, one week after the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with lawmakers unable to coalesce around a new leader in a stalemate that threatens to keep Congress partly shuttered indefinitely.

On Tuesday evening, two leading contenders for the gavel, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, were addressing colleagues behind closed doors at a candidate forum. But they appeared to be splitting the vote.

McCarthy, meanwhile, was openly ready to reclaim the gavel he just lost, but was seen by many as a longshot option unlikely to win back the handful of hardliners who just ousted him.

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    1 year ago

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Republican majority is stuck, one week after the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with lawmakers unable to coalesce around a new leader in a stalemate that threatens to keep Congress partly shuttered indefinitely.

    On Tuesday evening, two leading contenders for the gavel, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, were addressing colleagues behind closed doors at a candidate forum.

    Just 10 months in power, the historic ouster of their House speaker — a first in the U.S. — and the prolonged infighting it has unleashed are undercutting the Republicans’ ability to govern at a time of crisis at home and abroad.

    “We’re in a similar situation that we were back in January,” said Doug Heye, a former Republican leadership aide, adding the political optics of the feud look “terrible” to American voters.

    McCarthy headed into the evening forum insisting he was not, at the moment, a candidate for speaker and urging his colleagues to resolve the issue internally Wednesday before bringing a nominee forward to a full House vote.

    But the California Republican gave a nod to his own short track record as speaker — being ousted by the far-right flank after he led Congress to approve a stopgap spending bill to prevent a disruptive federal government shutdown.


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