Changing the rules back to the previous way
How does the “rules” part of this work? When McCarthy was finally elected, part of the deal with the fascists was a new rule that any single Rep could bring a “motion to vacate”. Does that rule survive McCarthy’s departure? Does the election of a new speaker entail establishing a new set of rules?
McCarthy got zero Democratic votes. If a Republican strikes a deal with Democratic house leadership to make concrete and meaningful concessions in exchange for a vote, they should be able to get more than a hundred Democratic votes, preventing future McCarthyisms.
Of course, Republicans might revolt, but revolting Republicans is nothing new.
As far as we know, only a very small GOP bloc is actually willing to do that, and could be easily offset by dems if they want to.
Although that relies on a huge assumption that the bloc willing to vacate a speaker won’t grow. There are a lot of people who are only slightly more sane than Gaetz who presumably realized that McCarthy worked as little with Democrats as was humanly possible and Gaetz’s feeling of betrayal was silly. Probably a different equation if a speaker literally relies on Democratic votes for their speakership.
The current set of House rules were adopted by the House as the second order of business after McCarthy was elected Speaker in January. Any change to the rules would have to be done through a resolution being brought to the floor to amend the rules. It would require a majority vote to be adopted.
If we get to the point where some of the Republicans are actually willing to work with the Democrats to elect a Speaker, it would seem like a slam dunk to change this rule. All the Democrats and the Republicans who worked with them would back such a change, and that would have to be a majority, or they’d have never elected the Speaker in the first place.
From CNN:
“We need to govern and we can’t govern without a speaker,” Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday.
Have these people not figured out that there is a significant number of folks in their own caucus who don’t want to govern, don’t know how to govern, and want to actually make it impossible to govern?
In addition, I suspect there is a non-negligible number who want to damage the country, either for self-aggrandizement or on orders from foreign leaders.
One congressman is now bribing his compatriots with McGriddles in exchange for votes.
Congressman McGriddles: bringing dignity and gravitas back to the House. Ba da ba ba ba!
Lovin it.
Better pitch than any of the other losers.
For clarity, Congressman McGriddle is running for Majority Leader, not Speaker of the House. He’s backing Scalise as Speaker, and wants to take his place as head of the caucus of goons.
Oh, McCaul has certainly figured that out.
But by fussing ineffectually about the obstructive situation, he’s trying to reposition the perception of the less-obstructing “mainstream” R party as part of the solution to obstruction, rather than an aider and abettor of the cause of obstruction.
It’s pure obfuscation and misdirection.
Now this is the way you take a head count.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is trolling Republicans so hard.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries invites Republicans to join Democrats “to get the House back on track.”
“We are inherently reasonable about what we think can occur, but we just require Republican partners in order to do it,” the House minority leader tells @GeoffRBennett.
Well, Scalise just withdrew his name from being considered in the Speaker’s race on live tee vee.
So there’s that.
Dems will never help to put Jordan in the seat. He’s a flamethrower and everyone knows it. Looks like they are going to have to go the Speaker Pro Tem route with McHenry.
It could be back to McCarthy.
I am… torn. I want our government to be functional, but I do not think that allowing any power to the unelected (by the house to be clear) Pro Tem is a good idea or within the expected/legal scope of the position.
Oh, I agree with you. This whole situation is so appalling to me in every way that I almost can’t speak about it.
We have fallen so far.
You, me and apparently about 70% of the US population agree. That other 30ish % of so…
I’d laugh if I didn’t want to also cry, scream and throw things. Definitely a good thing I haven’t given up on drinking.
… 
