But the “later” would be almost immediately. This plan is predicated on the “problem solvers” finding a candidate who would otherwise have no chance of winning, because they’d not be hard-right enough for the Freedum Caucus. So just by getting elected with support from Democrats, this new Speaker would be the target of all the FC wrath. They’d probably face a new motion to vacate almost immediately, which they’d again need the Democratic votes to survive.
And once that’s all past, then up comes the impending end of the Continuing Resolution. Having alienated the FC just by existing, the new Speaker would need at least a few Democratic votes to pass any new budget. To get those votes, the budget proposal would have to be at least marginally acceptable to the Democrats.
This will all play out in less than a month and a half, remember. There’s a lot of time pressure, and that makes it all the harder to play silly games.
I don’t think it’s their strategy, but Dems should say that they see this as an opportunity to have Jeffries elected as Speaker. It would be hard to argue against that kind of statement. If the R’s give the D’s an opportunity to elect a D as the Speaker, it makes sense for the D’s to take that opportunity. It would be the same as if the D’s had instigated a vote to remove Pelosi. Can anyone imagine any R voting to keep Pelosi? The R’s would be foolish to vote for her to stay. The D’s should also be saying that none of the R’s would have voted to keep Pelosi had the same thing happened to her.
So what is the altnative. The idea that Jefferies is going to be speaker is a fantasy. The Dems don’t have a majority so there is no way that even the Republican moderates are going to agree to that. So the other alternatives are.
No speaker and utter dysfunction until the government shuts down and probably beyond.
Jim Jordan as speaker and the crazies in total control
Somehow a non crazy McCarthy 2.0 gets into power but again only serves at the pleasure of the crazies and so is beholden to them and so the crazies might as well be in control.
Which one of these is better than the alternative I was proposing, in which we get a decent budget and the speaker is only serving at our pleasure.
It won’t be Hakeem Jeffries. My prediction (FWIW, I am often wrong):
Steve Scalise will convince enough of his own caucus to vote with some Dems to do away with the Gaetz 1-person motion to vacate rule.
Steve Scalise will be the new Speaker with help from Dems. This will all be worked out before the first vote is taken. The barest number of Dems required to get Scalise over the line will vote for him.
The new Republican majority (with help from Dems) will start to work in a slightly bipartisan way to get some wins on the board ahead of the 2024 election. Including avoiding another government shut down. They really don’t want to own another one.
So Dems are win-win. They get someone better to work with than McCarthy, and they can enhance Biden’s bipartisan cred.
I don’t get the the theory that speaker Kevin McCarthy is somehow so much better than speaker Gym Jordan that it would justify the Democrats casting principle and tradition aside in order to vote for him.
So Jordan will enthusiastically do every stupid thing that McCarthy did reluctantly because he was being held hostage. But the stupid shit will still happen, it doesn’t matter whether the doer is enthusiastic or reluctant.
Sounds similar to what I was proposing but I’m hoping that the Democrats would hold out for someone more moderate that Scalise. At the very least someone to didn’t vote to overturn the 2020 election.
My point is you never get the decent budget. The Speaker renegs and any budget bill is severely compromised. The Dems by themselves don’t have the votes to oust the new Speaker.
What you are suggesting is technically possible, but so is my cynical version. I don’t know how you convince enough Dems to vote for a GOP Speaker in the hopes that your version happens.
I agree with this. @Buck_Godot your 3 bad options aren’t much different than McCarthy.
I agree with this as well, which is why I support their not jumping in to save McCarthy’s bacon. But also why I don’t see any benefit to having the Dems sit on the side lines going forward.
So what scenario do you envision that the Dems can bring about that is better than McCarthy?
I don’t think there is one. Like the previous Speaker election, the Dems don’t have good enough cards to take the trick. The best they can do is to watch and be professional.
I think the GOP will have heard from their donors and will coalesce around a candidate; possibly even neuter the vacate rules. However I thought the same thing when McCarthy was running and was completely wrong. I suspect I can’t fathom how bad the GOP caucus is.
The point is that if there isn’t a meaningfully better alternative to getting “betrayed” by Republicans then its nit really a matter of trust or being bettayed at all. There’s really nothing to lose for the democrats to try.
I see 2 ways forward. Gaetz crew gets to choose Jordan or Scalise, in exchange for the appeal of the one-man-motion-to-vacate rule. Or the GOP tells Gaetz to pound sand and enters into a power sharing arrangement along the lines advocated by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in LHoD’s link (~post 145).
Jeffries seems to be angling for this: “The House should be restructured to promote governance by consensus and facilitate up-or-down votes on bills that have strong bipartisan support.” That would be consistent with what the Founding Fathers intended - country before factionalism - and is therefore probably a nonstarter for the GOP majority. Republican messaging is heavy on vilification, light on policy. Most Americans like bipartisanship, but that won’t help you win a GOP-only primary. I can only see this happen if the GOP deadlocks for an extended period of time over the motion to vacate rule. Basically the outcome turns upon Jordan and Scalise’s degree of political masochism.
Perhaps the dems figured that Gaetz figured it was theater that wasn’t going anywhere, but now the pubs will turn against Matt and the dems will have neutered him by proxy. What a comforting thought.
It’s hard to go from a win-lose society to a win-win society.
Building trust via interpersonal relationships is one way to get there. Eliminating the interpersonal relationships to destroy that trust is easier than putting them together. In the same way that one guy with a sledgehammer can knock down a wall that it took a team of masons to build, one Newt Gingrich can destroy the work of previous speakers in building trust among their congresscritters to work together on shared goals.