Seriously Jeffries consistently gets the most votes. One messaging is that any GOP representative interested in getting some centrist business done can vote for Jeffries anytime. That DOES make the most sense.
More realistically since Realpolitik doesn’t allow for that, the GOP needs to put forward a candidate who is not anathema to true bipartisanship as a prerequisite to any discussion of any Democratic help. Not sure that GOP representative exists but it is not among the current set running.
House Republicans are supposedly meeting tonight to hear from each of the nine candidates for Speaker. They plan to start voting in conference tomorrow morning, but it takes a majority of the conference supporting a candidate for that person to be the official nominee. With nine candidates, that could take a while.
And of course, as we’ve seen repeatedly, the fact that a candidate gets a majority of the Republican conference does not mean he will get the necessary 217 votes on the floor.
What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like.
Over at the NYT, Nate Cohn presents a good taxonomy of the Republican House.
40% supported Jordan consistently, even in secret ballots after Jordan was cooked. That’s a solid plurality, though not quite a majority. Given Jordan’s lack of legislative accomplishment, this suggests support for hard-right FC policies exceeding that.
10% were never-Jordan: they opposed Jordan publically. This group is the best understood. Many are from swing districts, but not all. Many were moderates, but not all. Some were budget committee members who presumably wanted to avoid the aggravation of working with Jordan. A quarter of them have already endorsed Trump for President.
That leaves 50%.
Cohn figures about half of them (~25% overall) accept Jordan: they voted for him in a secret ballot. Add 40% to this 25% and you have 65%, a strong majority of the caucus.
The other half (~25%) acquiesces to Jordan. They didn’t want him, but they voted for him on the floor anyway. I’m curious about whether they’ll face attack ads for this in another year: it probably it depends on Jordan’s 2024 antics.
To me, the big question is not how far right you are, but whether you can cut deals. The classic example of a hard right deal cutter would be Dick Cheney. Apparently 40% of GOP representatives don’t care much about whether or not the House can pass an annual budget, presumably reflecting their focus on messaging. That’s a large fraction, though not yet controlling.
ETA: Those reading thorny_locust’s interesting WAPO article are cautioned to interpret their Venn diagrams carefully. Their colored areas show the range of reps who voted publicly at least once against Jordan or McCarthy: but both numbers are small relative to entire GOP conference.
While I -know- it’s probably less likely than a number of (R) voting Present and giving a win to Jeffries (which would be a poisoned pill anyway) which in turn is less likely than actual (R) voting FOR Jeffries, I want Henry to be sick of it all and keep the House in session 12 hours a day voting until the (R) gets it’s shit together.
I know it’s not a hate on the level that most of these so-called leaders have earned for their actual unforgivable stances, but these people have kept the government locked for 3 weeks now, while still pulling all their pay. Spending 12 hours a day, 6 days a week until they can fix it seems only reasonable at this point.
And I’d love to see a working-class Republican talk about how entitled it is for these freaks to do so.
At a glance, Austin Scott seems like the closest to a winner (Emmer has more weird points plus, as one of McCarthy’s Whips, he’s probably ineligible for votes from the Freedom Caucus.)
If Scott can’t make it then the Republicans in Biden districts are probably going to need to nominate one of their own, hire bodyguards, and flip sides.
As Majority Whip, Emmer would be the logical choice for House Speaker if it wasn’t for FC/Trump. He’s a GOP normie.
The Hill rounds up the voting record of the nine running for the position. I agree with LHoD that for me support for democracy and the constitution is paramount and only 2 pass that test:
What about ability to cut deals? To review Jordan was 4th from bottom and McCarthy was a surprisingly low 207/222 (I understand that Speakers traditionally don’t vote unless a tie needs to be broken). Here are some selected scores:
Tom Emmer: 28/222
Austin Scott: 188/222
Mike Johnson: 27/222
Kevin Hern:160/222
Emmer’s effectiveness will be a real negative for the messaging oriented Freedom Caucus, though insurrectionist Mike Johnson has basically the same rank. Still all 4 of the above are measurably superior to Jim Jordan on that scale.
For reference here are the 9 contenders:
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.)
House Republican Conference Vice Chairman Mike Johnson (La.)
I know we have aligned that the Democrats should not help the Republicans here, but if someone like Emmer is put forward and the FC votes against him in a block, would be so bad for a few Blue Dog Democrats vote “present” to get him over the line? It sounds like we may not be able to do better, and can end up with a whole lot worse (or just continue the dysfunction). I am thinking such a move would simply crush the FC, or at least sap most of their current power - and it would also be a slap to Trump. I dunno, but I am thinking about it - we are in uncharted waters because of the situation - I don’t know how much longer making a point is worth what may come.
If all 45 Freedom Caucus members vote against him, it’ll take more than the 9 Blue Dogs left in Congress voting present to get him elected. Assuming every other Republican voted for Emmer, it would take 81 Democratic “present” votes to let him just squeak over the line.
I would be inclined to give Minority Leader Jeffries maximum negotiating power on this. But here’s the thing: the key issue is putting together a procedural majority. Would the Blue Dogs support putting bills to a vote that they oppose on their merits? I doubt it, at least without some sort of power sharing agreement. So most Republican institutionalists wouldn’t be so keen on getting this type of temporary Blue Dog support: they care about what happens after the House Leader is crowned.
Jeffries has proposed a centrist coalition on the condition that bills with strong bipartisan majorities get a floor vote. That’s the sort of deal that is imaginable, if you take out Republican hysteria about socialism and the like. But about 40% of the GOP House has bought into that. The founding fathers designed our system of government with broad coalitions in mind as outlined in the Federalist Papers, but conservatives find that view excessively constitutional, a nonstarter.
If 7 of the 9 Republican possibilties voted against certifying the 2020 election results, and if Democrats do anything to place one of them 2nd in line to replace the President, I will be upset and angry about it.
And why should it come to that? Because Republicans won’t support Jeffries instead? Well then fuck them, and they can own the consequences of what they have done.
This is worth emphasizing. I’m not sure I’d be pleased with any deal where the Dems help install a GOP Speaker, but I am certain that the bare minimum requirement, the first hurdle to get over, is that the candidate did not deliberately subvert the democratic process. An absolutely non-starter if they did.
As one example: the House Rules Committee has a supermajority of Republicans, including several Freedom Caucus members that McCarthy was forced to appoint as part of his deal to get the Speakership. The Rules Committee is enormously powerful – it sets the “rule” for when and how a bill can be debated on the floor and can even rewrite an entire bill if it wants to. Those committee appointments are set – a new Speaker can’t change them unilaterally. But it would be functionally impossible for a “compromise” Speaker to advance any remotely bipartisan legislation with the current committee membership.
The committee membership can be changed by a resolution of the whole House, but that’s another hill that would have to be negotiated.