IF the Republican Party wanted to repudiate the Trump wing of the party to prepare for 2024, then there is really only one person who should be Speaker
Liz Cheney
Those Republicans would be very likely to lose their seats in '24.
I’m more confident today that McCarthy is going to be the next Speaker. It looks like the Republican margin will be thin, but not 1-2 seats thin. He’ll be in the same position Pelosi was at the start of this past session when some progressive and moderate members were harrumphing about the need for a change. And he’ll do what she did – let them vent their spleen while he quietly cuts the deals that will secure him a majority.
A member is vested after five years and can retire at 62 with unreduced benefits, but the benefit is based on final average salary and years of service; it’s not automatically 80 percent. (In fact, under FERS, the retirement program for those who entered federal service after 1984, it would take about 66 years of service to get to 80 percent, and somebody who only has three terms or six years would receive a benefit closer to eight percent of final average salary.)
to quote barbie “math is hard”.
all the better to throw your name in the speaker name hat and taking a chance 2 years from now to regain your seat.
Can we put that old chestnut down? From the US General Accounting Office
For Members of Congress and congressional staff who have 5 or more years of congressional service, the formula is 2.5 percent of the average annual salaries they earned during their 3 consecutive highest-paid years (known as the “high 3”) for each year of congressional service. The same benefit formula applies to employees who are federal Claims Court judges, bankruptcy judges, U.S. Magistrates, or judges of the U.S. Court of Military Appeals.
McCarthy just won the Republican Caucus vote for its candidate for Speaker 188-31. He’ll need almost all of those 31 to support him in the floor vote in January.
I wonder who those 31 are and who they had in mind for Speaker?
They’re just proving a point. They will fall in line when the time comes.
Rep Andy Biggs of the Freedom Caucus is the only other announced candidate. But the ballot is secret.
And yeah, he’s probably gonna be fine. Pelosi had 32 votes against her in the Democratic Caucus vote in 2018 (although with a bigger majority). She spent November and December cutting the deals she needed to ensure she’d win the floor vote.
If Bacon tries to put forward someone that the Democrats would go for in bulk, it’s certainly screwed. A “Republican” who was elected by 200ish Democrats and 10ish Republicans would be an instantaneous lame duck and screw his own and those ten Republicans career futures.
If you can swing someone who could get 180ish Republicans and 30ish Democrats, that’s possibly feasible.
McCarthy would have credibility as a pure, faithful Republican that most Democrats wouldn’t dream of backing, so he wouldn’t be a bad choice. The centrists would just need to talk him into committing to appoint some reasonable people as his second and third, and bringing some particular votes to floor.
I’m not sure who else they could try to profer. I glanced through a list of representatives and my sense would be that the only people acceptable to Democrats in general would be the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump (e.g. John Katko). And everyone outside that list would be unnaceptable to most Democrats (e.g. Darrell Issa) and largely replaceable with McCarthy, from any practical sense. Giving the offer to Issa rather than McCarthy doesn’t necessarily net you anything better, in terms of getting a more honest and trustworthy person in the lead position. The only advantage is that you have more people to make the offer to, for better second and third positions.
That’s not nothing, but I don’t think you can expect much more than that.
Kevin McCarthy this weekend stated that if he becomes Speaker, he will not allow Democratic Reps Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell to sit on the House Foreign Affairs or Intelligence Committees. This is another break with the precedent that each party decides which of their specific members will serve on which committees, and an obvious concession to MTG who’s still steaming that she was stripped of her committee assignments by a vote of the House last year.
And Speaker Pelosi refused to seat certain Republicans to the January 6th Committee. Personally, I don’t think the majority should be choosing the minority party’s assignments, but that ship has sailed.
I suppose that the one good thing is that the more the House Speaker becomes a tyrant, the more the vote for the House Speaker becomes a bipartisan matter and, eventually, a more bipartisan person will get elected.
That said, I don’t think we’re looking to get to that point this cycle.
One of these things is not like the other… (but you, @D_Anconia, knew that)
Granting this premise (that we’re not there yet), what outside-the-box candidates can you suggest whom the Dems could settle upon (as better than McCarthy, and a hell of a lot better than a Froot Loops R) who might try to put a coalition of mostly Dems and a few Rs?
Some parameters for the purposes of discussion: assume the Dems will be united. This might be a tough one, but this assumption rests on even the most far-left lefty in the Dem caucus being persuaded to take a realpolitik attitude.
Further, assume this person is not thinking of his/her long future in electoral politics. That is, don’t assume that “I’d get primaried and lose if I even considered that” would be a factor. Instead, assume this person wants only to serve out his/her current term and go into private life in 2025.
And further, don’t limit yourself to currently serving Congresspersons. Feel free to suggest Adam Kinzinger or Paul Ryan or John Boehner. Or Newt Gingrich. Or Al Gore for that matter. Be as far ranging as you like in suggesting a compromise candidate, obviously leaning R, to gather the crucial R votes needed here.
If it helps, imagine that McCarthy is utterly foiled, and falls 30 or 50 votes short of being elected Speaker the first 10 ballots. Who steps forward to allow Congress to function?
Mitt Romney would probably be a strong enough option. I think the Democrats could be made to get behind him and, definitely, I think you could get a number of Republicans to accept him. And Romney might be willing to do it.
Interesting idea, with reverberations for the makeup of the Senate as well. Any other sitting (or former) Senators who might do it?
i’m thinking liz cheney…
I think that 90% of the members of the House of Representatives would gag at the thought of electing a Senator as their Speaker. And I’d be shocked if Romney wanted to trade his comfortable Senate seat for two years of being battered by every coalition in the House.