Next Speaker of the House? (10 Viewers)

[MT15]

There’s a lot of doubt that Kevin McCarthy will be able to get enough votes to become Speaker. It certainly won’t happen on the first ballot. Already Boboert and MTG are publicly at odds over it.

Maybe this is worth it’s own thread to watch. One person mentioned is Scalise.

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

 

[DaveXA]

Jordan doesn’t care if nothing happens. He’s an anarchist. Maybe if border patrol was closed and the borders were truly open, then maybe he would budge, but I think he’ll blow things up.

Jordan would absolutely blow things up. He'd get his jollies shutting the government down. Dollars to donuts, this 45 day CR will be it. When that runs out, there's no avoiding a shut down with Jordan at the helm.

And the Rs are gonna blame the Ds for all of it.

 

[DaveXA]

At all costs, the Democrats do not want Jordan as Speaker. They have to make some hard choices and align themselves with moderate Republicans. I don't care about how it looks. The country will burn with Jordan running things. Mark my words.

 

[Optimus Prime]

At all costs, the Democrats do not want Jordan as Speaker. They have to make some hard choices and align themselves with moderate Republicans. I don't care about how it looks. The country will burn with Jordan running things. Mark my words.

You know you’re serious when you say, “Mark my words”

 

[superchuck500]

 

[Optimus Prime]

It’s simple math: when the score reads 210 to 8, the side with the much tinier number should lose.

Yet that’s not how it works in the US House of Representatives.

On Tuesday, a mutiny led by eight hardline conservatives toppled speaker Kevin McCarthy and plunged the House into chaos. Rattled financial markets declined steeply and the prospects for a government shutdown six weeks from now rose dramatically.

The 15-round, days-long speaker battle that McCarthy finally won in January might seem like a short dash compared to the marathon to come.

The unforgivable sin that led Representative Matt Gaetz and a small band of Republican insurgents to move on McCarthy now?

The six-week, bipartisan compromise that the speaker brokered this weekend to prevent a government shutdown that would have further shaken markets, made air travel more dangerous, and halted paychecks for millions of workers, including in the military.

Eight members shouldn’t have this outsized power. Leaders who recognize the reality of compromise under divided government shouldn’t be ousted for working toward an accord.

Yet our system incentivizes extremism and anti-majoritarianism. It will only get worse until we change the rules and stop punishing what a functional democracy would reward.

It’s true that McCarthy all but sealed his fate when he agreed to allow just one member of his caucus – in this case, Gaetz – to call a vote to vacate the chair.

This condition of earning the Gaetz faction’s support back in January contained the seeds of his demise; as the principle of Chekhov’s Gun holds, a weapon introduced in the first act always returns before the end of the play.

It’s also true that Democrats – every one of whom voted against the speaker – provided the bulk of the votes that deposed McCarthy, as more reasonable voices within both parties failed to chart a path together that did not empower extremists.

“Now what?” cried one frustrated Republican after the vote. It’s a great question. There’s obviously no bipartisan consensus candidate. But which Republican could gain the trust and support of the majority of the caucus, and also the victorious far right?

Who would take the job under the conditions forced on McCarthy? Why would Gaetz and his allies now settle for anything less? The entire incentive structure has gone berserk…….

Why do eight radicals hold power over the entire US House of Representatives? | David Daley

There are hundreds of Congresspeople representing millions of Americans – yet undemocratic rules give people like Matt Gaetz outsized sway

www.theguardian.com

 

[superchuck500]

It’s simple math: when the score reads 210 to 8, the side with the much tinier number should lose.

Yet that’s not how it works in the US House of Representatives.

On Tuesday, a mutiny led by eight hardline conservatives toppled speaker Kevin McCarthy and plunged the House into chaos. Rattled financial markets declined steeply and the prospects for a government shutdown six weeks from now rose dramatically.

The 15-round, days-long speaker battle that McCarthy finally won in January might seem like a short dash compared to the marathon to come.

The unforgivable sin that led Representative Matt Gaetz and a small band of Republican insurgents to move on McCarthy now?

The six-week, bipartisan compromise that the speaker brokered this weekend to prevent a government shutdown that would have further shaken markets, made air travel more dangerous, and halted paychecks for millions of workers, including in the military.

Eight members shouldn’t have this outsized power. Leaders who recognize the reality of compromise under divided government shouldn’t be ousted for working toward an accord.

Yet our system incentivizes extremism and anti-majoritarianism. It will only get worse until we change the rules and stop punishing what a functional democracy would reward.

It’s true that McCarthy all but sealed his fate when he agreed to allow just one member of his caucus – in this case, Gaetz – to call a vote to vacate the chair.

This condition of earning the Gaetz faction’s support back in January contained the seeds of his demise; as the principle of Chekhov’s Gun holds, a weapon introduced in the first act always returns before the end of the play.

It’s also true that Democrats – every one of whom voted against the speaker – provided the bulk of the votes that deposed McCarthy, as more reasonable voices within both parties failed to chart a path together that did not empower extremists.

“Now what?” cried one frustrated Republican after the vote. It’s a great question. There’s obviously no bipartisan consensus candidate. But which Republican could gain the trust and support of the majority of the caucus, and also the victorious far right?

Who would take the job under the conditions forced on McCarthy? Why would Gaetz and his allies now settle for anything less? The entire incentive structure has gone berserk…….

Why do eight radicals hold power over the entire US House of Representatives? | David Daley

There are hundreds of Congresspeople representing millions of Americans – yet undemocratic rules give people like Matt Gaetz outsized sway

www.theguardian.com

Yeah, I think a lot of this "8 people sank the House of Representatives into chaos" is a mischaracterization. It was several key events where actual power based on the design of the chamber brought about this result. First, the Speaker (a clear source of power) agreed to allow a single member to move to vacate - and that process requires a full chamber vote within 24-hours. So right there is huge step 1, that's not how it normally works and it was the Speaker that did it. Second, it wasn't 8 votes to vacate the Speaker, it was 216 votes in favor to only 210 votes against.

People can delve all into the party dynamics and whatnot, but the objective record is that a motion to vacate was brought and then passed by a majority of the members of the House. The fallout will be what the fallout is, and certainly some of that may be unintended consequences for both the 8 GOP members and the 208 Democrats, but the motion passed a majority of the House. That's not some bizarre upsetting of power, it's a simple majority. How they got there and all of that, sure, that can be characterized in various ways but 8 members didn't do anything. One Speaker gave up majority rule on a motion. One member brought the motion. And it passed 216-210.

 

[coldseat]

Jordan doesn’t care if nothing happens. He’s an anarchist. Maybe if border patrol was closed and the borders were truly open, then maybe he would budge, but I think he’ll blow things up.

I agree, he'll definitely try. But by "blow up", what you mean is a protracted government shutdown. That may happen regardless of who's Speaker as Republicans have been unable to pass any appropriations bills to date. It's not going to be any easier for the next Speaker than it was for McCarthy.

Electing Jordan would be peak Republicanism. Electing an originator of the chaos congress to be your leader after your leader was sabotaged and congress thrust into chaos by one of his agents. I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen.

 

[coldseat]

A good article on why a compromise Speaker likely won't happen.

===============
Just hours before a vote to oust Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the House speaker Tuesday, a group of Democrats and Republicans met in a conference room on the third floor of the Cannon House Office Building to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid the history that was soon to be made.

The group was drawn from the 64-member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, representatives who consider themselves more moderate and more pragmatic than their parties’ firebrands. Some hailed from swing districts where voters might applaud bipartisan action.

For over an hour, people familiar with the session said, Republicans in the group begged Democrats to support the stability of the institution by agreeing to save McCarthy — the speaker who had spent nine months catering to the most extreme elements in his party and who helped resurrect Donald Trump’s image after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats were bewildered, the people said. They felt McCarthy had done little to earn their trust — and had not asked for their help.

They countered by reminding Republicans that they believed the House needed to first pass new rules to increase the minority party’s power and make it harder to oust the speaker in the future, insulating him from far-right challenges.

In another country, or perhaps another political system or environment, these were the members who might have banded together to support a candidate for leader and spare the government and the country unprecedented chaos.

Instead, the tenor of the meeting turned heated. It ended with no agreement — and McCarthy’s fate was sealed. Later that afternoon, all of the House’s 208 Democrats joined with eight conservative Republicans to vote McCarthy out of his job, firing a speaker for the first time in U.S. history.

The failure of the last-ditch effort by the self-styled “problem solvers” underscores how unlikely it will be for the House to solve its leadership vacuum in the coming days through some kind of unity government that might otherwise seem the most obvious path forward.

Even with government funding set to lapse in less than 45 days, aid to Ukraine in limbo and America’s reputation as a functioning democracy on the line, there was little sign this week of interest in cobbling together a bipartisan coalition that could be the fastest way to collect the 217 votes necessary to elect a speaker.

“It really hurts me for what happened here,” Problem Solvers Caucus member Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) said in an interview Wednesday, bemoaning that McCarthy was overthrown because he supported a measure on Saturday backed by Democrats that avoided a government shutdown. “He was working on behalf of the American people — that was not a political decision. That was the right thing to do for our country and he got fired? I don’t understand the game anymore.”

A Democrat in the meeting countered that a trust deficit made it impossible to make a deal with their GOP counterparts before concrete action on the rules.

“Nobody trusts Kevin to keep their word,” said the lawmaker, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose conversations from a private meeting.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), McCarthy’s second-in-command, officially announced a bid for speaker Wednesday, as did Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a conservative firebrand who once butted heads with McCarthy in the battle to become the GOP leader in 2018. Other candidates may emerge in the coming days, but Scalise and Jordan have so far indicated that they plan to win the job by appealing to Republicans alone.

As GOP lawmakers ducked in and out of meetings this week, making pitches to one another in initial bids to garner support for the top job, rank-and-file members ruled out the imminent possibility of a bipartisan effort to save them from their latest state of chaos.

“I think the Republican conference will be stronger when we first work with ourselves,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-Tex.) said Wednesday on his way to a lunch with the Texas delegation where prospective speakers sounded out potential allies.

Compromise, even among pragmatic members in swing districts, is a tall order in this political environment. Moderate Democrats and Republicans face the constant threat of primaries, and many live in fear of being targeted by powerful conservative media. Even members who represent swing districts fret about being punished by extreme voters in primary elections, a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus said.

House rules adopted in a compromise that allowed McCarthy to win the job in January — after days of strife and 15 ballots — have also empowered individual members with outsize influence over the House GOP conference, exacerbating the party’s partisan polarization. A motion to vacate, for example, is a congressional procedure to remove a presiding officer from a position that can be triggered by just one House member. Once initiated, it takes priority on the House floor ahead of all other business. This week, the motion was moved by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Trump ally.

On top of all that, lingering anger over the events of the past week could impede the kind of one-on-one negotiations necessary to craft any kind of bipartisan deal in the days ahead.
=====================

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/05/mccarthy-speaker-coalition-government/

 

[DaveXA]

A good article on why a compromise Speaker likely won't happen.

===============
Just hours before a vote to oust Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the House speaker Tuesday, a group of Democrats and Republicans met in a conference room on the third floor of the Cannon House Office Building to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid the history that was soon to be made.

The group was drawn from the 64-member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, representatives who consider themselves more moderate and more pragmatic than their parties’ firebrands. Some hailed from swing districts where voters might applaud bipartisan action.

For over an hour, people familiar with the session said, Republicans in the group begged Democrats to support the stability of the institution by agreeing to save McCarthy — the speaker who had spent nine months catering to the most extreme elements in his party and who helped resurrect Donald Trump’s image after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats were bewildered, the people said. They felt McCarthy had done little to earn their trust — and had not asked for their help.

They countered by reminding Republicans that they believed the House needed to first pass new rules to increase the minority party’s power and make it harder to oust the speaker in the future, insulating him from far-right challenges.

In another country, or perhaps another political system or environment, these were the members who might have banded together to support a candidate for leader and spare the government and the country unprecedented chaos.

Instead, the tenor of the meeting turned heated. It ended with no agreement — and McCarthy’s fate was sealed. Later that afternoon, all of the House’s 208 Democrats joined with eight conservative Republicans to vote McCarthy out of his job, firing a speaker for the first time in U.S. history.

The failure of the last-ditch effort by the self-styled “problem solvers” underscores how unlikely it will be for the House to solve its leadership vacuum in the coming days through some kind of unity government that might otherwise seem the most obvious path forward.

Even with government funding set to lapse in less than 45 days, aid to Ukraine in limbo and America’s reputation as a functioning democracy on the line, there was little sign this week of interest in cobbling together a bipartisan coalition that could be the fastest way to collect the 217 votes necessary to elect a speaker.

“It really hurts me for what happened here,” Problem Solvers Caucus member Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) said in an interview Wednesday, bemoaning that McCarthy was overthrown because he supported a measure on Saturday backed by Democrats that avoided a government shutdown. “He was working on behalf of the American people — that was not a political decision. That was the right thing to do for our country and he got fired? I don’t understand the game anymore.”

A Democrat in the meeting countered that a trust deficit made it impossible to make a deal with their GOP counterparts before concrete action on the rules.

“Nobody trusts Kevin to keep their word,” said the lawmaker, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose conversations from a private meeting.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), McCarthy’s second-in-command, officially announced a bid for speaker Wednesday, as did Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a conservative firebrand who once butted heads with McCarthy in the battle to become the GOP leader in 2018. Other candidates may emerge in the coming days, but Scalise and Jordan have so far indicated that they plan to win the job by appealing to Republicans alone.

As GOP lawmakers ducked in and out of meetings this week, making pitches to one another in initial bids to garner support for the top job, rank-and-file members ruled out the imminent possibility of a bipartisan effort to save them from their latest state of chaos.

“I think the Republican conference will be stronger when we first work with ourselves,” Rep. August Pfluger (R-Tex.) said Wednesday on his way to a lunch with the Texas delegation where prospective speakers sounded out potential allies.

Compromise, even among pragmatic members in swing districts, is a tall order in this political environment. Moderate Democrats and Republicans face the constant threat of primaries, and many live in fear of being targeted by powerful conservative media. Even members who represent swing districts fret about being punished by extreme voters in primary elections, a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus said.

House rules adopted in a compromise that allowed McCarthy to win the job in January — after days of strife and 15 ballots — have also empowered individual members with outsize influence over the House GOP conference, exacerbating the party’s partisan polarization. A motion to vacate, for example, is a congressional procedure to remove a presiding officer from a position that can be triggered by just one House member. Once initiated, it takes priority on the House floor ahead of all other business. This week, the motion was moved by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Trump ally.

On top of all that, lingering anger over the events of the past week could impede the kind of one-on-one negotiations necessary to craft any kind of bipartisan deal in the days ahead.
=====================

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/05/mccarthy-speaker-coalition-government/

I think it will happen, just not right away. The Republican caucus is gonna try the go it alone route again and only at that point when they realize nothing gets done without bringing the Ds on board for a moderate choice. I think the Ds are content to let the Rs fork things up more and make it clear that the only way compromise happens is if the moderate Rs go to them with an alternate plan.

 

[Lapaz]

I think it will happen, just not right away. The Republican caucus is gonna try the go it alone route again and only at that point when they realize nothing gets done without bringing the Ds on board for a moderate choice. I think the Ds are content to let the Rs fork things up more and make it clear that the only way compromise happens is if the moderate Rs go to them with an alternate plan.

Republicans only have 222 members. There are currently 434 seated members, so Republicans need 217 members to approve a speaker. I want to believe that it will be impossible for them to get 217 to vote for Jordan. Scalise is much more popular, and he may not blow things up, so that gives me some hope. But the best bet would be if Joyce or another moderate would run for speaker. I think some Democrats would support a moderate to get him to 217 votes. Then hopefully they will also change the rules to make it harder to vacate the next speaker, so the freedom caucus can't cause anarchy.

 

[DaveXA]

Republicans only have 222 members. There are currently 434 seated members, so Republicans need 217 members to approve a speaker. I want to believe that it will be impossible for them to get 217 to vote for Jordan. Scalise is much more popular, and he may not blow things up, so that gives me some hope. But the best bet would be if Joyce or another moderate would run for speaker. I think some Democrats would support a moderate to get him to 217 votes. Then hopefully they will also change the rules to make it harder to vacate the next speaker, so the freedom caucus can't cause anarchy.

Yeah, I would not agree to become speaker unless they change that rule.

 

[MT15]

Republicans only have 222 members. There are currently 434 seated members, so Republicans need 217 members to approve a speaker. I want to believe that it will be impossible for them to get 217 to vote for Jordan. Scalise is much more popular, and he may not blow things up, so that gives me some hope. But the best bet would be if Joyce or another moderate would run for speaker. I think some Democrats would support a moderate to get him to 217 votes. Then hopefully they will also change the rules to make it harder to vacate the next speaker, so the freedom caucus can't cause anarchy.

I don’t know if this is correct, but I heard someone say that Dems would have helped McCarthy if he would have changed the rule about vacating back to the way it was before, but he refused to delay the vote to give the House time to go through a rule change. He easily could have delayed the vacate vote, but chose not to do so

 

[DaveXA]

I don’t know if this is correct, but I heard someone say that Dems would have helped McCarthy if he would have changed the rule about vacating back to the way it was before, but he refused to delay the vote to give the House time to go through a rule change. He easily could have delayed the vacate vote, but chose not to do so

McCarthy just blew it. He kept flying too close to the sun and got burnt. This whole thing is 100% squarely on him.

 

[DaveXA]

And now it's being reported that McCarthy is leaving Congress altogether. Lol, after being the guy pushing Pelosi out of her office, then this? Oof.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

And now it's being reported that McCarthy is leaving Congress altogether. Lol, after being the guy pushing Pelosi out of her office, then this? Oof.

He is...

McCarthy denies reports he’s leaving Congress | CNN Politics

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is denying reports that he is expected to step down from Congress before the end of his term – telling reporters on Friday that he still has “work to do,” after sending signals in private conversations that he could step down early from Congress.

www.cnn.com

 

[UriUT]

Yeah, I think a lot of this "8 people sank the House of Representatives into chaos" is a mischaracterization. It was several key events where actual power based on the design of the chamber brought about this result. First, the Speaker (a clear source of power) agreed to allow a single member to move to vacate - and that process requires a full chamber vote within 24-hours. So right there is huge step 1, that's not how it normally works and it was the Speaker that did it. Second, it wasn't 8 votes to vacate the Speaker, it was 216 votes in favor to only 210 votes against.

People can delve all into the party dynamics and whatnot, but the objective record is that a motion to vacate was brought and then passed by a majority of the members of the House. The fallout will be what the fallout is, and certainly some of that may be unintended consequences for both the 8 GOP members and the 208 Democrats, but the motion passed a majority of the House. That's not some bizarre upsetting of power, it's a simple majority. How they got there and all of that, sure, that can be characterized in various ways but 8 members didn't do anything. One Speaker gave up majority rule on a motion. One member brought the motion. And it passed 216-210.

I think it's deeper than this because the following had a [edit]solution: give the Dems that rule change.

That's not some bizarre upsetting of power, it's a simple majority. How they got there and all of that, sure, that can be characterized in various ways but 8 members didn't do anything. One Speaker gave up majority rule on a motion. One member brought the motion. And it passed 216-210.

Look at it from the Dems point of view. Biden and McCarthy had a deal to pass clean spending bills for 2 years.

Biden and McCarthy reach a final deal to avoid US default and now must sell it to Congress

The debt ceiling deal has come with just days to spare before a potential first-ever government default. On Sunday, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a final agreement and they are urging Congress to quickly pass it. Biden pronounced the development “good news” in...

apnews.com

In exchange, the Dems agreed to a flat budget and others such as epa changes. Further, one of the Biden victories was an increase in the IRS budget and employment. That was gutted as part of that Biden McCarthy deal. Fine, the Dems compromised in a good faith deal. (Edit: when I say compromise, it's not really. They hold the presidency and the Senate. And only lose the house by a small margin. What they gain is stability. They gain nothing in terms of policy.)

Then not even a quarter of a year into the agreement, McCarthy is pressured not only to renegotiate that deal, but to start a sham impeachment inquiry. This is a case of a terrorist faction holding a gun to the head of a hostage (the American economy). As part of the rewritten deal, the Dems now lose Ukraine aid. A deal had been struck and now the terrorists wants to rewrite the deal with a gun again at the head of the hostage. And he is doing so because the leader is pressured by his cohorts. From the dems view, when will it end? It ends when the leader doesn't feel pressured from the loons and that's what they asked. A [edit]solution to the source of the problem. And this isn't isolated to McCarthy. These psycho repubs wants to drag it out because they want that gun to be perpetually at the head of the hostage. That's why they refused the rules change. To rush a vote was to dare the Dems into a position of saving the institutions....a mockery as I said earlier. The clowns don't care for that. Those speeches were for the Dems. It is to preserve the gun and corner the Dems. The Dems finally said enough. They know good faith negotiations can't happen.