Leaving by the end of this year
McCarthy resigns with “smile on his face.”
December 6th, 2023, 10:10 p.m
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First, Kevin McCarthy loses his position as leader of the US House of Representatives because the House of Representatives votes him out of office. Now he’s completely throwing in the towel. He says he doesn’t want to be a member of parliament next year and wants to serve his country in another way.
Former US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is stepping down as a representative. He has decided to leave the House of Representatives at the end of this year “to serve America in new ways,” the Republican wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. “I know that my work is just beginning.” The 58-year-old further wrote that he was leaving with a “smile on his face.”
McCarthy was voted out of the post of chairman of the parliamentary chamber in a historic vote at the beginning of October – after he had only been elected by MPs after 15 rounds of voting just nine months earlier. Radical Republicans first hindered his election and then drove him from office. It was the first time in US history that a chairman of the House of Representatives lost his job in this way. The office comes third in the United States’ hierarchy after the president and his vice president.
After weeks of internal party power struggles, Republican Mike Johnson became the new leader of the US House of Representatives in October. Johnson was the fourth Republican candidate for the presidency after McCarthy was voted out. Three candidates previously nominated by the Republicans had dropped out due to a lack of support within their own ranks – two of them before there was even a vote in the plenary session.
“It often seems that the more Washington does, the worse off America is,” McCarthy wrote in his opinion piece. He started his career as a small business owner and looks forward to helping entrepreneurs and risk-takers realize their full potential. “The challenges we face are more likely to be solved through innovation than through legislation,” said McCarthy.