I don’t know about him specifically, but some people lust for power at any price.
Right. Whether it is a position of power for its own sake or because one honestly believes they can do good by being the person in that position, some are willing to take on a variety of headaches to be in positions of power and responsibility.
The simplest way for there to be a compromise candidate is for 5 moderate Republicans to get fed up with their party declare themselves independent and caucus with the Democrats. I also think that it is the most likely such scenario.
Any Republican who backs a candidate supported by more Democrats that Republicans is going to be persona non grata within their party. They will lose any future primary, and not be selected for any committee. So their best shot at keeping any semblance of power is to go to the other side.
Plus then comes the sunk cost “dammit, I worked hard to get here and now that we’re past the finish line you want me to just hand it over?” factor. After a while in this pursuit you are invested – if you’ve already toiled to get there, you fear you’ll look like you’re saying “it was not worth it” to those who supported you. If you feel you’ve earned the prize by enduring tests, you’ll believe you can endure some more to at least try to do something with it.
Mind you, though, it would not pain me to see them make Kevin sweat some more into Tuesday afternoon. 'cause his definition of enduring tests has of late involved asking how much farther he needs to bend over and he may be out of further degrees of bending.
Yeah. Whoever does this might as well announce they are retiring from active politics.
“All politics is local.” They would be being true to the brands they won primaries on before. This last cycle diminishes the threat of farther right wackos as they demonstrated that such loses seats that they would continue to win.
Only if the seats are competitive. Otherwise refer to Liz Cheney.
My WAG, and it is nothing more than that, is that if the less extreme GOP conservatives could have been successfully primaried, they already would have been.
OTOH they’d never win primaries, let alone elections, as Democrats.
Too bad I work all day Tuesday. Seeing this game of chicken play out in real time would be fun.
NY Times has another update (paywalled) on tomorrow’s vote, which continues to be problematic for McCarthy:
Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, is struggling to break through a wall of entrenched opposition from hard-right lawmakers even after agreeing to weaken his leadership power.
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the party leader, was still toiling on Monday — 24 hours before Republicans assume the House majority — to lock down the votes he needs to be elected speaker because he had so far failed to break through entrenched opposition from hard-right lawmakers.
The recalcitrance among ultraconservative lawmakers, even after Mr. McCarthy made a key concession that would weaken his power in the top post, threatened a tumultuous start to the Republican majority in the House. The standoff underscored Mr. McCarthy’s precarious position within his conference and all but guaranteed that even if he eked out a victory he would be a diminished figure beholden to an empowered right flank.
With little time left ahead of the vote on Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy attempted over the weekend to deliver the hard-liners a major concession by agreeing to a rule that would allow a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker. Lawmakers opposing him had listed the change as one of their top demands, and Mr. McCarthy had earlier refused to swallow it, regarding it as tantamount to signing the death warrant for his speakership in advance. But in recent days, he signaled he would accept it if the threshold for calling such a vote were five lawmakers rather than a single member.
But that was not enough to sway the five rebels opposing him. and more dissenters emerged on Sunday night, after Mr. McCarthy announced the concession to Republicans in a conference call.
I still think he will be Speaker by the end of the day tomorrow, but I hope I’m wrong!
He is moving into the speaker’s suite. Perhaps he is trying a trump move?
The impression I get is that in the old days negotiations were done during the actual vote, if not all the time than more often than is done today. These days we have more of a pre-negotiation where the real horse trading gets done, and then the actual votes are just a formality. Now we’re running into one of those rare situations where there’s a hard deadline for the formal vote and the pre-negotiations have failed.
My guess would be around 9/30/2023 when the funding bill that was passed reaches the end date for the government to stay open.
Sooner than that — we’ll need a debt limit increase sometime in the spring.
leopards and faces . The standard Republican negotiation tactic of asking for concession in exchange for cooperation and then moving the goal posts when the concessions are granted is staring to bite them in the ass.
What time is the circus supposed to start tomorrow? Think it may be a fun thing to watch.
Looking at the various pages of the different offices, GOP Conference is scheduled to meet at 9am and the Congressional term expires at 12:00 noon, so it would be at some point after that. Normally the opening is scheduled for noon and may or may not run late. Who knows if this year the Conference can get their act together before noon.
The outgoing House is scheduled to meet at 10am, that would be a pro forma meeting to do some closing procedural formalities, then officially adjourn and hand over to the Clerk the managing of the opening.
Reminded me of an incident back in - made 1990. Was in DC for some training and a coworker and I played hooky one afternoon to see the sights. In those days, a federal ID gained you entry to many places and we were roaming all over the Capitol. We were running up some back stairs and opened a door - to be confronted by a HUGE security officer asking who we were and what we were doing there. All I remember was his sidearm and marksman medal. Surprisingly, he believed that we were just a couple of idiots! 
He walked us out of a different door and told us not to come back. We found ourselves in the rotunda, and looking back, saw we had just come out of the Speaker’s office. 
A different time!
wow! that is a different time. who would have been the speaker then?
Isn’t that actually good news for him? If he wants to be Speaker, all he has to do is accept those demands. The article doesn’t specify what the demands were, but my guess is that they have to do with the much talked about measure that any 5 representatives can call for a vote of no confidence in the Speaker whenever they want. That’s a different situation than if those opposing him were Never Kevins who couldn’t be won over no matter matter what he offered. If this is the only hold up, McCarthy will probably cave to their demands by the second or third vote, and all the drama will be over.
There aren’t a ton of details, but there’s this:
Demanding that he not be able to choose who to support in future races is an enormous demand–I’m not sure if McCarthy can accede to it.