Agreed. I’m not seeing how losing a close vote makes one look like a dickhead. Is the message that if you aren’t assured of a win, you join the other side?
Are you accusing these guys of having principles or moral courage?
jtgain–Yes, historically, that’s how Speakership races go–you either put together a candidate who actually wants the position, count heads, have a strategy etc. or else you vote for the sole candidate of your party. These shitheads couldn’t organize a clusterfuck.
So presumably there was already a caucus vote on the candidates, right? Do we know how many votes Boehner got there, or do the parties keep those votes under-wraps.
I’m not sure if there is a record of caucus votes. I’m not even sure it’s a formal “vote” so much as the caucus is meeting, and it is made known who has the support of the majority of the caucus.
Head counting is a frequent and furious activity in the House. When there have been genuine Speakership battles you might have 2-3 viable candidates fighting in the caucus, but I believe when the moment of truth comes the two candidates that simply do not have the votes openly support the other guy in the caucus, so that the party all votes for the one guy in the actual floor vote on the House.
As Freddy mentioned, this was the formula followed for many, many decades, with basically everyone agreeing to behave. Since Gingrich you’ve had some people carry their fights beyond the caucus-level, which in the past would be considered stupid and unthinkable. But now it happens in small numbers at every election.
However Gingrich fought off his own coup because he simply noted that the best his opponents could hope for was to destroy the party because he’d never step down. If I was Boehner and the foolish “rebels” had forced a second vote I’d make a similar threat, you get behind me or this never ends, there isn’t a single Republican with enough support to beat me outright so you either get behind me or I let this voting go on forever and destroy the party.
Someone asked upthread if there is a way to remove a sitting Speaker, the answer is yes. Generally the Speaker has control of what business can go to the House floor for a vote on a day-to-day basis, but there is a procedural mechanism where if a majority of the House votes to bring something to the floor over the Speaker’s objections they can do so. The scenario where this would go down would require either a huge majority of the Speaker’s own party revolting against him, or a core of rebels agreeing to collude with the other party to pass the discharge resolution and get the motion to remove on the floor.
A Speaker has never been removed from office mid-term that I’m aware of, though.
The House membership almost always changes slightly throughout the two year House term as guys resign, die off, take other jobs etc and different people come in to replace them. Some have speculated that if you ever had a very, very close House such that a few changes here or there would change the party of majority, that’s how you’d see the Speaker change. The old majority party would still have their Speaker there by default, and he could still control what motions make it to the floor. However, presumably with the rare opportunity of seizing control of the House mid-term being present the opposition would vote with 100% uniformity to remove the sitting Speaker and then they’d elect their own Speaker (thus insuring the majority party always controls the Speakership.)