After a historic fifteen votes, Kevin McCarthy has won the race and is now named House Majority Speaker.

Because of the twenty Republican Congresspeople that consistently voted against McCarthy, the new House Speaker had to make many concessions to appeal for the votes, the votes coming from far-right republicans.

Many of the concessions he made limits the power of his role as house speaker. This may become a problem for the Republican party because of the razor-thin margin they have as majority.

The struggle to elect a speaker has undermined the effectiveness of the House even before the 2023 session opened. This struggle may foreshadow the next two years of passing Bills, budgets, and financing federal debt.

Although the concessions he made may have hurt the power of House Speaker, and in turn the bipartisanship of Congress, as well as potentially hurt the future of the Republican Party, McCarthy has remained optimistic.

“Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy made a speech emphasizing unity, pledging open debate and an open door between Democrats and Republicans, despite obvious divisions between and even within the parties.

One of the first acts as the Speaker of the House, McCarthy took a photo with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Congresswomen who contested the 2020 Presidential election, much to the displeasure of the rest of the House.

The lengthened election for the House Speaker sets the stage for how Congress will progress for the rest of the term, and the concessions made by McCarthy solidifies the far-right direction.

Many people, including Democrats oppose that direction, but believe that the further right Congress goes, the higher the chance that Republicans will not continue to have a majority. This is because the majority of Republicans do not hold far-right views, but moderate and even independent views.

“To win back the Independents they lost in 2022, Republicans should be embracing bipartisanship and compromise, but instead they are doubling down on the extremism that prevented them from achieving a red wave.” said Matt Hogan, a democratic pollster.

That being said, chair of the Conservative Action Project and long-time conservative strategist Kenneth Blackwell disagree with this sediment.

“The politics of America is turning out to a base. It is no longer being decided by 20% of independent voters.”

It is still up in the air the true direction Congress will go in for the next two years, that being said the division between the Democratic and Republican parties is dividing more and more with every election.