Is it too much to hope that this will continue, keeping the house from doing anything at all for a couple of years?
Kevin McCarthy failed to get House speaker votes. In fact, Hakeem Jeffries received more than he did
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It shows just how bad McCarthy is at the job of Speaker, and that nobody better in the GOP has tried to replace him, which makes them all very bad for the job of Speaker too.
All those reports the last few years that Nancy never brought a vote to the floor that she didn’t already know the outcome. The vote for Speaker is just the first vote to take place in the house. Someone good at the Speaker job would have whipped all the votes, made all the deals, and been assured of the outcome before the first vote.
As the first vote, without already having a speaker, and needing to be done before anything else can happen, it’s not like he could delay holding the vote to keep whipping and organizing a coalition. We’ve now seen four times that McCarthy is unable to lead the GOP and form a coalition within the party. Unable to secure even this first vote, if he eventually wins through some dumb luck, we should expect he’ll be unable to get any legislation beyond conspiracy theories passed at all.
On the bright side, 1 R voted Present instead of for someone. Just need 11 of them to screw up and do that too (or just go to lunch and not come back). Some misguided protest and also being bad at math, would be right on brand for them. That would allow Jeffries to win with 212. Alternatively, they could vote to change to a plurality winner and not actually have 213 R votes, that would do it too. Bad at vote counting, math, and coalition building for this one too, still right on brand.
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I think anyone, and not just Kevin McCarthy, would have trouble with this lot of idiots. I do not want to sound like I’m dismissing Pelosi’s achievements – based on everything I’ve read, she was the best Speaker in decades! – but she had the great advantage that her caucus was composed of more or less rational adults who actually wanted to govern, instead of just burning everything down and dancing in the ashes.
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Except we need the house to do some things.
Presuming the Senate is able to pass stuff. We need a house that’s able to peel off 6 R votes, probably in tight districts where Independent votes matter and the risk of an R MAGA primary is already assumed anyway.
Meaning, we need the house to at least be able to start session and not just do literally nothing at all but hold Speaker votes for 2 years.
Don’t get me wrong, holding Speaker votes every day for 2 years where McCarthy loses again and again and again would be humorous on some level.
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I love this
President Joe Biden, departing the White House for a bipartisan event in Kentucky with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, said “the rest of the world is looking” at the scene on the House floor.
“I just think it’s really embarrassing it’s taking so long,” Biden said. “I have no idea” who will prevail.
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It is guaranteed to complete. There’s no pope to appoint new cardinals, and none of them are spring chickens…
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In that case, the locals got sick of the election going on and on, and put the Cardinals on bread-and-water rations. When that didn’t work, they started tearing down the roof over their heads, at which point a consensus was finally reached.
I don’t think the Biden administration would allow demolishing the roof of the House, but who knows, if this goes on long enough… 
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I’d argue there’s a fourth: progressive dems, but they aren’t really a faction for this vote. The Republicans must not realize that, as evidenced by both GOP factions trying to negotiate with AOC. 
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Nominate someone who’s not a member of the House to be Speaker. There’s no Constitutional requirements that the Speaker be a member, and having Kevin McCarthy get fewer votes than someone who isn’t a member (even if that person declines should they win) would certainly be humiliating for him.
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I am being fairly serious here: Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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5th vote just concluded and was identical to the 4th vote.
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Republicans all hate him now since he came out as anti-neo nazi
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Not bad, not bad at all. Has the political chops as a former governor, and would certainly terminate any bullshit Greene tried to pull. Or he could probably just throw her out of the room (figuratively, by ordering security, despite people wishing he was allowed to do it literally.)
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And he wouldn’t be in line for succession.
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It would also temper the desire of Republicans to impeach Biden and Harris because, as someone who isn’t a natural-born-citizen, Schwarzenegger wouldn’t meet the requirements to become President and it would go to the next in line.
(We should probably change that requirement sometime though- lots of great, otherwise qualified folks weren’t born here.)
But yeah, Republicans would never support him after he came out against Trump and Nazis.
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Uh ohs, Boebert has turned on her besty.
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The government is funded through the end of September. Frankly, nothing at all is about the best case scenario under a Republican majority until then.
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