Except as I understand it, the position of Speaker pro tem was created after 9/11, to ensure continuity in the House if the Speaker was offed by enemy action. If that was the situation they were thinking about, you want a Speaker pro tem who can take action during a crisis and do more than just run an election, don’t you? (Just my thought; I know there’s no clear answer here.)
Since we’re just spit-balling. NO.
For one reason, you could get someone, anyone, who manages to promise hell and high water to be elected speaker. Who is then forced out, or (worse?) grinningly steps aside, and selects, well, literally anyone to be Pro-Tem. As others have suggested, perhaps jokingly, Trump. And then while there aren’t enough votes to otherwise remove / replace them, you have someone utterly unqualified, and perhaps an utterly amoral criminal in a position of extreme legislative power.
Sure, there would be challenges up, down, and sideways. But in the meantime? OMFG.
So no - I don’t want that or any similar scenario, even if the government grinds to a halt. It’s a god-awful situation, but better than we force the House to fix their problems, even with a likely shutdown and slowdown on aid to Ukraine and Israel, than to let that worst-case scenario happen.
Twenty years ago, the idea that Congressmen would vote against the candidate endorsed by their party conference was unimaginable. Leadership was a ladder, and the House Majority Leader would have been voted in that afternoon as the new Speaker. We are in uncharted waters.
There’s a little bit more to it than that. First of all, their entire families have been asked to suffer and sacrifice enormously in order to support their campaigns. To just say “OK, I’m going to throw it all away now.” may very well end marriages, and relationships with adult children.
They are not prepared for any other job. The GOP very carefully chooses people like Gaetz and Boebert who really have no chance of making this level of money in another context. Their one chance would be some GOP donor just granting them a salary for being a PR face on their company. If they burn bridges, that ain’t happening.
Would a Dem donor do that for them? Unlikely.
They will be much too hated to make a living speaking. Nobody is going to want to buy their books. What could they do except join the used car sales profession? And they come from GOP districts, so who in their home would ever buy from them??
Look at Pence. He ticked off the MAGAts, and when he left the Vice Presidency, he didn’t even have a home to live in.
Good points, but I think a power vacuum will always get filled, somehow.
Some GOP congressmen seem to be working on a formal stopgap:
It’s descending to playground politics:
“Jimmy said mean things about Stevie, so even though Stevie’s not playing any more, I won’t play with Jimmy! So there!”
I might be willing to tolerate such an effort, at least it’s something that presumably would be voted on by the full house. But, not picking on you N_P, why do I suspect that if they can’t get the votes to pick a speaker, they can’t get a majority of votes to make someone a temporary speaker? And why would Democrats support such while the Republicans are very busy punching themselves in the balls?
I think it would lead right back to where we are right now, some large, but insufficient percentage of Republicans would go for it and Democrats would rightly demand concessions for pushing it over the line, which would, once again, make it DOA.
Maybe, maaaaaybe in another 2 weeks, after the Republicans have fully discredited themselves, the Democrats will “take one for the team” and offer to support a 15 day such for more limited promises (to bring Ukraine, Israel and Debt ceiling ONLY forward for example), but the article basically said that Republican’s want this so they can campaign internally, not for the good of government. Which is unspeakably shitty of them as usual.
I personally find it baffling that “Speaker” and “Majority Leader” are two separate offices in the House and the former is the one in charge, when there’s a Minority Leader but no Shadow Speaker, and in the Senate the Majority Leader runs the place while President of the Senate is mostly a ceremonial role.
This will be rectified when I am appointed to redraft the Constitution (which will be referred to as Constitution 2: Electric Boogaloo).
I think the Dems have to get behind any sane Candidate or the looney caucus has won.
The only sane candidates have a (D) after their name.
No, I think Steve Scalise was sane, Wrong about nearly everything, yes, but sane.,
If Republicans want to support Jeffries, they’re welcome to.
Not quite sure why the GOP can’t support a centrist. It’s not like the speaker would stop ideas of the far right coming to vote. Or the budget.
Any crazy ideas would be vetoed by Biden so it is all rather irrelevant to 2025. The far right Freedom caucus has too much power. Perhaps the no speaker IS their strategy?
Did you mean to say “Reps”? If not, why not? The Dems are already behind a sane candidate.
Exactly. The Democrats wont and shouldn’t help the Republicans fix their mess. Let the pressure keep building until the GOP explodes/implodes or whatever - the end result can’t be much worse than what we’re already dealing with.
Except for all of the people’s business that isn’t getting done while the Republicans play juggling games with chainsaws.
Straight up, when Republicans DID hold the gavel, the “people’s business” was hardly getting done anyway. What was getting done was almost entirely community theater for the party base.
If we knew that once someone were elected, the House would become functional and effective, I’d be feeling a lot more urgency. But if Jordan gets in power, we’re likely to see a lot of Biden impeachment hearings and government shutdowns–so what’s the rush?
It only takes a majority of Representatives to change the rules of the House.
Yeah, this is a smart prediction. My (vague) understanding is that she is highly ambitious, and she is already in a leadership role, so I can see her stepping forward and giving it a go.
And I agree with you that McHenry is also a possibility, out of inertia if nothing else.
I hope you’re right. I fear that after a couple weeks of chaos and media attention about how disfunctional the GOP house is, they will throw up their hands and make the calculus that a crazy GOP nutjob as Speaker is better than nobody as Speaker.
Certainly the idea that some sane GOP members will align with some moderate Dems on some compromise candidate is … an idea from a previous era of politics, shall we say.
But once again- the primary voters LIKE the chaos. And so there will never be a comeuppance. I mean, if it hasn’t happened by now…