Recently, the United States almost faced a government shutdown.
The issue of determining a budget for the upcoming fiscal year remained without resolution close to the nearing deadline, which would have meant no payments being made to some sectors. After neither following through on far-right demands nor finding a fast solution for the quickly-approaching government shutdown, former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his position.
He was voted out 216 to 210, with eight Republicans voting with the Democrats. While this isn’t a significant number of Republicans, this is the first time that a Speaker has been ousted.
Furthermore, there have been multiple other times that Republicans have been upset with the way McCarthy was leading the House. This happened when McCarthy negotiated a debt ceiling limit raise in May this year.
Even McCarthy’s rise to the position was difficult. It took him 15 rounds of voting to finally win a majority.
Representative Steve Scalise had been in the running, but he dropped out, realizing his lack of support among the far-right side of the House. Just recently, Jim Jordan won the GOP nomination. However, one of the secret ballots in the party only showed his majority in the party as 124 to 81 and another following one showed increased support of 152 to 55.
However, Jordan still needs to win the majority of the whole House, and those 55 Republicans are going to make it difficult for Jordan to secure a majority. On the first ballot, he failed to win a majority, only receiving 200 votes of the 217 he would need to win office. Instead, Democrat Jefferies won the most, 212; however, all of those were Democrats, and no Republicans supported his nomination.
In light of McCarthy’s and Jordan’s struggle alike, one thing is very clear: the Republican party is divided.
This isn’t just in the House either. The presidential race for the Republican nomination highlights many candidates who are still in the running, a year away from the general election: Donald Trump, Ron Desantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Doug Burgum. While Trump has been the clear front-runner, he still hasn’t shown a majority of the party’s support in the polls.
Meanwhile, the majority of the Democratic Party has shown clear support for President Joe Biden as their 2024 presidential candidate. Evidently, the Republican party is divided and lacking unifying leaders.
This especially started to happen following Trump’s nomination for presidency in the 2020 election and has been increasing since, particularly after the Jan. 6 capitol insurrection as even more Republicans dropped their support for Trump. Still, he retains a strong following, creating a deep rift in the party.
In a Winthrop University straw poll, 50.5% of Republicans voted for Trump while 72% of Democrats approved of Biden’s handling of his job, highlighting how much less united the Republican party is.
While this divide is mainly showing in the Speaker of the House position right now, which is bound to be held by a Republican as they are the majority party in the House, this divide will certainly play a key role in next year’s presidential election.
