McCarthy spokesman: 100 days in power and a tough road ahead

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Rep. kevin mccarthy sprung from a unordered election of 15 ballots and amounted to house speakerhe was emboldened instead of chastening himself for the fight, declaring that his father taught him very early in life: “That’s not how it starts; that’s how you end up.”

But as the embattled California Republican leader navigates his first 100 days leading a slim Republican House majority, it’s hard to shake the spectacle of shaky pitching that has become a defining background beat for McCarthy. speaker.

So far, McCarthy has recorded stunning successes in the new Congress: The Republican House has passed dozens of bills, many of them bipartisan, including politically powerful efforts. aiming at crime and the COVID-19 pandemic that left the president Joe Biden there is almost no choice but sign the bills.

McCarthy has opened the Capitol more fully to visitors, enjoying onlookers stopping to take selfies during his impromptu press conferences in the hallways. He received its first foreign leader, President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwanwith a diplomatic touch, leading a bipartisan coalition of anti-China lawmakers.

On Monday, McCarthy will give a speech on the New York Stock Exchange, another sign of his growing influence.

It’s been 100 days since the new Congress, and McCarthy’s oratory is what one top Democratic congressional aide likened to the spotlight on the theater stage, with the audience waiting for the play to start and then suddenly realizing Notice there is no script.

McCarthy is playing the role of speaker, second in line for the presidency, but the Republican leader sided with donald trump he remains stubbornly limited in action due to his awkward grip on the mallet. Any legislator can call to vote expel the speaker from office.

As such, McCarthy has been unable to direct House republicans to start meeting broader goals: the GOP promises for border security or budget cuts to avoid a debt ceiling crisis, for starters. How you handle them will be the defining challenge that will make or break your next 100 days.

“This is where McCarthy is,” said Jeffery A. Jenkins, a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California who has written about House speakers.

“The power of any single speaker is endogenous,” he said. “This Congress, McCarthy will always have little leeway. He will have to walk a tightrope.”

In many ways, it was inevitable that whoever followed the last Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would operate differently due to the outsized role she played as one of the most powerful congressional leaders of modern times. She often jokes that she has become a reduction for the Republican Party chair.

But McCarthy is remodeling the speaker’s office in his image, including the recovery a private room a few steps from the floor of the house for meetings The silver-haired father avoids many of the formal trappings of Congress (he may never return to the televised briefing room on Capitol Hill for formal press conferences) as he begins to harness the enormous powers at his disposal.

It often suggests that you are being underestimated. House Republicans stunned Washington with some unexpected early victories when they took control in January for the first time in four years.

Republicans nearly forced Biden to sign the first bills, including one to reverse the District of Columbia’s penal code. The Democrats were furious when the White House abandoned efforts to veto the measure and played into the heavy-handed anti-crime rhetoric of the Republican Party.

In other steps, McCarthy found that Democrats were willing to cross party lines: create a select committee focused on America’s competition with China, to demand that the administration to declassify as much intelligence as possible about the origins of COVID-19 and to demand an abrupt end to the national pandemic emergency.

The far-right critics who withheld their support for McCarthy through the excruciating 15 ballots he took to become a speaker before agreeing to their demands seem relatively pleased with the outcome.

“He’s performed better than I thought he would,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a former Freedom Caucus chair, said in an interview. “I can not complain.”

For conservative observers of the establishment, the House under McCarthy is a welcome contrast to the last two years of Democratic Party rule in Washington.

“Now there really is a check and balance,” said Eric Cantor, a former leader of the Republican Party. “He’s delivering that every day and it’s very effective, obviously, in keeping his troops together.”

But the fight to become a speaker is never far behind, thanks to a Trump-aligned powerhouse in Congress that backed McCarthy and could easily topple him.

Trump’s endorsement ensured McCarthy won his race to become a speaker, both men said, but the former president’s endorsement can easily be lost.

As McCarthy balances his own Reagan-style optimism with the more extreme Trump-aligned populists at his conference, he has remained close to Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump’s main allies. He has been leading efforts to ease detention conditions for defendants facing some of the most serious charges stemming from the Capitol insurrection.

In another nod to his right flank, McCarthy posted thousands of hours of video footage of the riots for Tucker Carlson of Fox News, who has fanned false conspiracy theories of the attack. McCarthy was among members of Congress who voted on January 6, 2021, against certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.

The House Democrats’ campaign arm issued a memo last week saying the House’s new Republican majority is “too extreme to lead.”

Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., and longtime leader of the Congressional Asian-Pacific American Caucus, said in an interview that the lengthy election to name McCarthy speaker “was the most shameful week ever in congressional history.” : and I don’t think things have gotten much better.”

even the house research in Biden and his family, who were supposed to be the cornerstone of the new Republican majority, have turned into a free-for-all with various committees examining all aspects of the federal government.

“I work hard,” said Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, Chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committeehe told The Associated Press of the speaker. “But he is doing very well.”

Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ge., a member of the Freedom Caucus who was among the holdouts during the weeklong speaker’s pick, said it all could make McCarthy “the greatest speaker” of his life.

“We’re proud of him,” said Clyde, whose crime bill was the first Biden signed into law.

“I mean, he’s shown that he can fight. She has shown that she will endure. Well, that should terrify the White House and terrify the Senate. The House is in control.”