When the 1972 elections were held in St Vincent and the Grenadines, the two political parties each won six seats. The only other seat was won by an independent candidate, James Mitchell. Normally in such a scenario, both parties would try to woo the successful independent candidate with offers of a prominent position in the Government and specific policy commitments. Mitchell threw his lot in with the Opposition party with one proviso — that he would be the head of the government. And so it was! Such is the awesome power of a decisive minority.

That awesome power is being demonstrated in the United States in determining the control and direction of the House of Representatives. The Republicans gained control of the House with 222 seats, giving them a small majority of nine seats. Kevin McCarthy, who had long yearned to be the Speaker, needed at least 218 votes to clinch the position. He has the support of 90 per cent of the Republican members but that falls short of the 218 votes required. The 20 or so members who don’t support him include a handful that are resolute that he must never occupy the Speaker’s chair. His nemesis, Congressman Matt Gaetz, even called him a “squatter” for prematurely moving into the Speaker’s office. McCarthy has a very thin margin to play with — he cannot prevail if more than four of his members withhold their support.

Eleven strikes but not out

At the time of writing, 11 rounds of voting had taken place over three days and on each occasion at least 19 Republican members had refused to vote for McCarthy. It is they who won every round since their objective is not for their nominated candidates to win but for McCarthy’s victory to be thwarted. All the late-night, pizza-served negotiations had not moved the needle even one bit. In fact, his detractors had grown in number since the first round from 19 to 21. Finding an alternative to McCarthy is not a fix since he or she would face the same maths.

McCarthy had been trying to secure the required 218 votes ever since the November elections. It was tough going. The majority of the dissidents are members of the Freedom Caucus made up of right-wing extremists with a clearly defined agenda. Referred to by critics as the “Chaos Caucus”, they are determined to dismantle the Republican establishment, consolidate their control of the Republican party and turn the Congress into a firestorm battlefield to block virtually everything that the Biden Administration tries to do.

They are intent on launching congressional investigations into the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations and any government agency they consider to have offended Donald Trump. An investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter, is at the top of the agenda. There is even talk of impeaching Biden although they have not yet identified what to impeach him on.

Budget approval would be a tortuous process. So, too, would raising of the debt ceiling without which government shutdowns will become inevitable. Bills passed by the Democrat-controlled Senate, even with the bi-partisan support that its filibuster rule requires, would most likely be dead on arrival on the floor of the House.

Concession after concession

So determined was McCarthy to secure the Speakership that he made concession after concession to get the support of the Gang of Twenty. He hardly had anything left to give. He has agreed to their more-than-proportionate inclusion on several powerful committees and to allow individual members to bring to the floor amendments to spending Bills which will result in a tedious and messy approval process. Amending spending proposals is not as simple as making changes to a grocery shopping list. McCarthy has yielded to the demand to eviscerate the independent ethics oversight body that investigates the conduct of members as well as prohibiting his powerful Political Action Committee from supporting particular candidates in open primaries in safe Republican seats — a move designed to enable the right-wing extremists to snatch the primaries and expand their membership in the Congress.

McCarthy’s most expensive concession, however, is his agreement to allow any one member to bring for a vote on the floor of the House a resolution for the removal of the Speaker. Previously, this would have required the support of at least a half of the Republican membership. McCarthy initially agreed to reduce this number to five but that wasn’t enough. He is prepared to put a noose around his own neck in the hope that the trap door is never flown.

Unlike our Parliament where the Speaker’s role is to preside over but not determine its proceedings, the Speaker in the US Congress has traditionally wielded enormous power in determining what matters are dealt with, which ones are placed in slow-motion and which ones are left to die a natural death. McCarthy’s obsession with becoming Speaker was so great that he will be the weakest Speaker in US history, presiding over a chamber that is so large and unwieldly and inclined to be so contentious that, without a strong Speaker, is almost certain to become dysfunctional.

It is interesting that the Gang of Twenty, who are all Trump loyalists, have persisted in their revolt despite Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy which suggests either that the endorsement is a sham or that Trump no longer controls the monster he helped to create.

McCarthy — hostage to both Republicans and Democrats

McCarthy has painted himself into an impossible corner. In the day-to-day workings of the House, he is not going to be able to appease both the Gang of Twenty and the more moderate Republican members. What is more, he would have placed himself at the mercy of not only the Gang of Twenty — any one of whom would now be able to bring a motion for his removal — but of the Democrats as well, because if such a motion were to be brought and supported by even only five Republicans, the Democrats, with their 213 votes, may be only too willing to finish the job. McCarthy’s gavel would have a heavy chain attached to it and he would not be able to know on any day whether he will still be in the Speaker’s chair the following week.

McCarthy is the perfect example of a transactional politician who follows from in front wherever the crowd appears to be going. Immediately after the January 6 riot at the Capitol, he justifiably blamed Trump for it. Within a matter of days, fearful that he had just ruined his hopes of becoming Speaker, he pilgrimed to Mar-a-Lago to seek forgiveness.

If McCarthy were not so vacuous, if his ambitions to become the Speaker were undergirded by a set of principles and commitments as to how the House could best serve the American people, his place in history — as is the case with Liz Cheney — would have been better served by enunciating those principles and commitments, pushing back on the extremists and letting the voting proceed. He might not have become the Speaker but history may have recorded him as the best Speaker that the House never had and its future may have been well guided.

A way out

The best solution for the sake of the American people might be for McCarthy to try to cut a deal with the Democrats to help get him over the hump. All that would be needed would be for 40 Democrats to record their votes as “present”. That would lower the threshold that has to be met to less than 200 and allow him to scrape home without the support of the Gang of Twenty. This would necessitate a different set of concessions and commitments but could well produce a more bipartisan approach to the business of the House to the benefit of the Democrats, in particular, and the entire nation.

UPDATE: McCarthy managed to succeed on the 15th round. There is no clear information as to what further concessions or commitments brought this about. Whatever they may be (and they will be soon called) , he will be a hobbled Speaker — hardly what the Doctor ordered.

— Bruce Golding served as Jamaica’s eighth prime minister from September 11, 2007 to October 23, 2011