I don’t see how Republicans will be able to elect a Speaker without help from the Democrats.
It took 15 rounds to elect McCarthy and they’re even more fractured now than they were before.
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McCarthy set off an explosion on the bridge so large the MythBusters told him “Damn, I think you overdid it a bit.” There’s no going back for him; it’s well and thoroughly burned.
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Rumor is that the office swap was a last bit of spiteful revenge by McCarthy allies on McCarthy’s behalf. The temporary speaker is probably aware that the only hope for a quick, non-traumatic new Speaker vote process is garnering at least a tiny bit of support from some random Dems, and pissing off Pelosi is definitely not the way to get that…
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Since only 8 Republicans voted for the ouster instead of the two dozen or so normally associated with the fuitbats, I’m not sure the new election will be quite as tough as the last. The trouble they have is that the reasonably sane ones have already noted that they don’t particularly want the job.
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Not really. They’re all pretty equally horrible. The choice shouldn’t be between different brand of fascists.
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Oh I’m sure. Also one can be perfectly happy and screwed over at the same time.
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Thanks for that link. AOC’s explainer video linked in the article was great.
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I mean, you just need 218 votes, regardless of party (minus anyone voting “present”). If 7 Republicans had gotten fed up by the 14th round of voting last January, and joined the 212 Democrats voting for Hakeem Jeffries, Jeffries would be the speaker now.
They’re are definitely not going to be 7 such Republicans tomorrow, since it would be political suicide to vote for a Democrat, but maybe if this drags in long enough…
My guess is more likely Democrats will be the ones to be the kingmaker. If ten Republicans decide to vote on someone vaguely same, possibly the Democrats will go along with it.
Basically either
- Republicans all find unity
- A few Republicans back a vaguely-sane R candidate and the Democrats decide en masse to vote for them
- A few Republicans decide to vote for the Democrat candidate
- We go without a speaker for months and the government shuts down and mass pain ensues
I have literally no idea which of those things I expect to see first.
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Matt Gaetz learning the wrong lessons from Dune
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“But I didn’t think they’d eat my face”
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“How come when Paul Atreides did a bunch of drugs and hooked up with a teenage girl they put him in charge of running the galaxy but when I did it everyone treated me like some kind of criminal??”
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even though that’d be a disaster, the more i think about it the less likely it seems.
primarily because ■■■■■ hates working, and speakership is a job with actual duties to perform. plus, he wants to be king and speaker isn’t that
i could see them nominating him, and then him never showing up. it just doesn’t seem his thing
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Gaetz thinks he’s Paul Atreides but he’s really just a sand trout
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The current House rules won’t allow this, but only because Trump is under indictment for felonies with a potential sentence of two or more years (Rule 26). Republicans would have to vote to change this rule, which of course they can’t do until they have a speaker.
So they would have to elect a speaker, get the rules changed (which the speaker would have to allow), then oust that speaker and elect Trump.
That would be some like 7-D chess to pull off.
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Like the Republicans, the Democrats don’t have to do it En-Masse. But there are so few sane Republican Congresscritters, and even fewer trying for Speaker.
… on the other hand, running the House is a lot like hosting a reality TV game show 
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… or they could just ignore it
The House is one of those institutions that exists outside anyone else’s power to make it follow rules
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Keep in mind many of those “8 Republicans” are why it took an unheard of 15 votes to get McCarthy the speaker in the first place. It will be a very difficult needle to thread to find someone who’s awful enough for the Matt Gaetz caucus to vote for, yet not quite awful enough for the rest of the R’s to also vote for.
This may be, but it’s not quite to Calvin Ball levels (yet). If they just decide to just ignore their rules, Hakeem Jeffries may as well declare himself Giga Ruler of The House and fire all the Republicans.
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Sure, Dems don’t have to vote en masse, but my hypothesis was that any Republican who is sane enough that some Dems would consider voting for would have to be one that is only supported by a tiny handful of Republicans.
I can’t imagine any scenario where a compromise is brokered between half the Rs and half the Ds.
That’s why I figured the only way a new speaker could get elected would either be nearly-complete Republican unity (seems unlikely) or a candidate that a small number of one party plus the vast majority of the other party could get behind (even less likely).
Another scenario, if we were approaching government shut-down, might be that the Ds decide that whoever the majority of the Rs are supporting is better than whoever Gaetz is supporting, and just decide to vote “present.” That would be yet another crappy outcome, but potentially better than a shutdown.
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