WASHINGTON – Like two years ago, yesterday, January 6, we saw two Americas face to face. The America of justice and loyalty, and the America of betrayal and lies. We will have to get used to this dualism in the leading democracy of the West because now that the Republican Kevin McCarthy has finally taken office as Speaker of the Chamber, he will begin his most difficult task: to govern a naturally difficult legislative process without the necessary credibility and authority. For the new Speaker of a narrow Republican majority it will be almost impossible to counter the diehards of the right who rejected, humiliated and mistreated him to the end. Moreover after depriving him of the last shreds of his power in exchange for their vote.
The frame, after the appointment and the difficulties, remains the American one as always. McCarthy recalled her humble origins and those equally humble of Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democratic minority, evoking the great opportunities of the American dream. He promised to work for the people and appeared sincerely moved. But the issue is not only emotional. We say this because to find such a marked and narrow-minded division within a party like the one we saw up to yesterday among the Republicans, we must go back 164 years ago, to 1859, when there was a similar impasse in Congress, shortly before of the Civil War that would put the young American nation to fire and sword.
America’s antibodies
by Paolo Garimberti
Today the most worrying step is the passage from extreme polarization between the two parties to outright polarization interna to a party. Let’s quote an episode for everyone. After making the latest concessions, including one that authorizes a single lawmaker from his party to distrust him, or one that finances an inquiry into the Justice Department and Joe Biden, McCarthy had said triumphantly that he had coagulated a majority. But when it came to the vote of Matt Gaetz Florida Republican the castle collapsed. Gaetz cheated and by one vote McCarthy failed. Pandemonium broke out in the courtroom. McCarthy confronted Gaetz. Another deputy threatened to come to blows. It took a call from Donald Trump to put the pieces back together and allow with a technicality to return to the fifteenth vote and McCarthy’s victory. Which has naturally put the former president back at the center of the political equation for the 2024 primaries, while also allowing him to hold McCarthy hostage to him.
However, the most serious concerns for McCarthy’s tenure come from the recent experience in the history of the party, made up of pitfalls and backstabbing at the hands of the extreme right already for McCarthy’s two predecessors. We take Paul RyanRepublican Speaker since 2015, intelligent, good-looking, honest, suitable for a presidential future, took everyone by surprise when in 2019 he decided to abandon the presidency and politics together at the age of 48 because he could no longer take the provocations he suffered from the Freedom Caucus: “If politics becomes exploiting divisions instead of unity, it’s not for me anymore,” he said. And he left, disappearing from the scene.
Trump’s encore is now further away
by Marta Dassù
Before Ryan there was the drama of the Speaker John Boehner, a good-natured Ohio, tear easy when he told of his rise from scratch. A man clearly motivated by intellectual honesty. But for the Freedom Caucus, always that one, the management was weak, not very bad against the Democrats. And they slaughtered him. Boehner, who took office in 2011, threw in the towel in September 2015. He himself said he took his party’s majority leader by surprise when he told him he was leaving: ‘I had to tell him five times before he believed me. really,” he said.
As it happens, the majority leader was Kevin McCarthy. This is to say that the man thoroughly understands the malice and determination to humiliate the opponent on the part of the members of the Freedom Caucus. There is no doubt that the parliamentary group today is destroying the credibility of the Republican party and if with Ryan and Boehner the extremists have had the good taste to humiliate them after their settlement here was for the first time anticipated. Imagine what will happen when you have to vote on the budget or the appropriations!
What will become of Trump
by Gianni Riotta
But let us not forget the America of justice and loyalty. Also yesterday, we saw her at the White House. Twelve people who defended American democracy in Congress and elsewhere on January 6 two years ago, received from Biden one of the highest civilian honors for valor, the Presidential Citizen Medal. Lots of emotion. Especially when the widows or parents of those who paid with their lives on that dramatic day showed up to take the medals. And in the confrontation between the dignity of the guardians of freedoms and the betrayals of the Freedom Caucus and petty characters like Gaetz, we can have no doubt who will ultimately prevail in this internal dualism. Also because it affects our future.