Tis. A thousand times this.
It’s a pretty pass our country has been driven to by these criminal traitors. But it’s the pretty pass we’re at. A clear-eyed understanding is the best, indeed the only, possible way forward for the good guys.
It actually is in the heading.
Note that the Constitution does not requires the Speaker to be human, either. So, why not elect a horse? It has precedent.
Can we get back to reality now?
They see deeper than we do. Clearly they think the GOP will - after a sting of no hopers, finally nominate a kinda -sorta moderate, which the assholes will vote NO! on but the mass of republicans can vote for, along with a handful of Dems. There are 8 assholes, and the GOP has a majority of 9 currently. So, one of two blue dog Dems vote (as instructed by Dem leadership).
Jim Jordan, someone will nom trump, then another deplorable, then finally someone kinda sane will step up. It does not require the whole Dem caucus, just a few.
Yep.
Playing chess while your enemies are playing tic-tac-toe is usually a winning strategy in the medium- and long-term. And hence one I always recommend.
Unless they kick over the board first. Then you need to start shooting. Metaphorically of course, this is a civilized messageboard.
I heard it reported (CNN or MSNBC) that McCarthy was responsible for Pelosi losing her hidey hole, and that McCarthy is moving in. Oh yeah, he got Stenny Hoyer, too.
But tell me again about how Democrats should have saved his election denying, insurrection encouraging ass.
There we go. That makes sense. McCarthy only decided to cross the aisle at the last possible moment. They don’t trust him to do the practical thing and try for a bipartisan Congress. And, even if he did, the current rules would mean that Gaetz et al. could keep on creating a new motion to vacate.
I personally also thought they’d just abstain if this happened. But I was assuming they thought McCarthy had learned his lesson. Following up with an attack n the Dems, showing he’s still trying to court the Freedom Caucus, shows he did not.
He needed to be willing to make MAGA irrelevant.
He’s not the first who failed at this:
You’re not wrong. And that’s why Dems pushed McCarthy out.
McCarthy lies as reflexively as Trump. There was no good reason to save him from the Gaetz caucus.
It’s easy to believe that Republicans as a caucus will blow it all up, but from what I’m hearing, the large majority of them recognize that’s a fast road to irrelevance and losing the House in 2024. That leaves only one path: Work with Democrats in a bipartisan way.
I heard James Clyburn saying nice things this morning about Steve Scalise. I think enough Dems would support a Scalise speakership that it can pass, and relatively soon. He’s a piece of shit, but he does understand the need to work with Dems to accomplish anything in the current situation. No downside for Dems to support him.
They won’t support Jordan.
Scalise is one of the most anti-LGBT people in Congress and is very pro-Trump and has never admitted that Biden won the election.
As I said, he’s a piece of shit. But apparently he’s not perceived as a liar. He does appear to recognize nothing is going to get done without Democrats’ assistance.
FWIW: No cite…just in my roaming of the internet today I have seen Scalise mentioned a lot as a front runner for the next speaker.
Mmmm… horses always vote nay on everything. How about them joining the 21st century and elect an AI as Speaker.
If you want a horse to be a speaker you need a continuous supply of peanut butter.
A whole horse this time? That would be a change.
I’m not sure that gerrymandering is at the root of this. The whole point of gerrymandering is to create many Republican districts with slim majorities, and a few Democrat districts with huge majorities.
The Freedom Circus folks who drove this all have large majorities; the opposite of what gerrymandering would predict. And Lauren Boebert, who won her last election by a whisker, broke from the FC and voted to keep McCarthy as Speaker.
You originally asked, “Didn’t someone post a cite showing that the House rules- (which can be changed of course) require that the Speaker be a Member?” and then subsequently cited a document that isn’t the House rules at all – but rather a “guide to the rules, precedents and procedures of the House.” A subchapter heading from a summary report on House practice has zero relevance to the actual authority to elect a Speaker.
As this CRS report notes, individuals not serving in the House received votes in Speaker elections in 1997, 2013, 2015, 2019, 2021, and 2023. It is unprecedented for the House to elect a non-member Speaker, but it is clearly permissible.
This is probably a good discussion to have in another thread. I’ll just say that the “root” problem might be argued to be several different things. Education, the economy, Gerrymandering leap to mind.
I will say that, when a state Gerrymanders it so only republicans can win then there is plenty of reason for those republicans to steer hard-right. They need not moderate their politics at all and are usually rewarded for being extreme…because they will win no matter what.
The real race is in the primary against another republican and, to distinguish themself from their competition, they need to show how much more conservative they are than the other person. Once in the general they are shoe-in. No need to be moderate.
If there was a legit competition in the general then the candidates would have to move to the middle.
I can vote for Mickey Mouse too, but that doesnt mean he could take office.
In 1872 three electors voted for a dead dude. Does that mean being dead is not a barrier to being President? 
In 2000 one elector voted for “blank”- does that mean a candidate doesnt even have to exist to be elected President? 
People throw some useless votes as a protest from time to time. That doesnt mean their vote meant that candidate could have taken office.
So established that there is no requirement that the Speaker has to be a member of the House.
Likely the Speaker does need to be a real person. Albeit Air Bud would likely does as well as some. But in the race could anyone beat a dead horse?
All right, I’m not gonna play this game. If you have some cites you want to share claiming that the Speaker must be a sitting member of Congress, we can discuss further.
Mencken had a lot of observations about politics and elections. I’ve always liked this one, relevant as it was to the election results in 2016:
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
And of course, when the reason that she wasn’t even in Washington was because she was attending a funeral.
As for potential new Speakers, what if some Democrat proposed John Kasich, or the like? If the Democrats united, they probably could pull in enough Republican votes to make it happen, and Kasich would be a definite improvement over any Republican actually in the House, and might even be able to start the healing of the party.