Rep. Steve Scalise is dropping out of the speaker’s race after House Republicans failed to coalesce behind him in the aftermath of Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster.
House Republicans met behind closed-doors for more than two hours Thursday afternoon, where the Majority leader urged his detractors to explain their opposition to him in front of the conference. After the meeting ended, Scalise huddled with those opposed to him in his office. And Republicans scheduled a second members-only conference meeting for Thursday evening.
But the opposition to Scalise as the next speaker only grew Thursday, with roughly 20 Republicans publicly opposing him. Scalise needs a majority of the House to be elected speaker, meaning he can only afford to lose four votes.
I’ve unpinned the Megapost as it’s more clear than ever that the US House is completely rudderless.
Will re-pin if that changes.
Be ready to not pin it for a while
Sure looks that way, doesn’t it?
Thank you!
Like, holy shit, how can anyone look at the modern GOP and see anything other than the most inept traitors and useless clowns in US history?
Easy. They’re looking with eyes wide closed. And to them it’s glorious.
It’s the cult programming. Literally.
The media that GOP voters consume tells them that the Republicans are owning the libs day after day. That makes the Republican Party heroic in their voters’ eyes, because their voters are broken people.
Come on now. Let’s not be insulting clowns by comparing them to the GOP. They don’t deserve that.
🤡 honk honk
Homey don’t play that
This is what they base wants, a non-functioning federal government
Nah, they want a non functional federal government that functions in the way they think it should, which changes with their specific needs only.
The “two santa” GOP pretends it will do the above by vague statements,nearly zero policy positions and wide use of the words “fake news.”
Democrats should start quietly approaching moderate Republicans and go:
"Look… Vote for Jeffries. Yeah, yeah, you’ll lose your next election, but that’s just tearing the band-aid off.
"You know your caucus is a shit show, we know it’s a shit show, everyone knows it’s a shit show, and the majority of your voters have lost their minds. You’re trying to hold a coalition of sane and insane Republicans together, and that’s a political dead-end anyway.
“So go out with a bang, by doing the right thing and saving our country. We got so much bad shit going on in the world right now, we need a functional House. End your political career on an act you can be proud of.”
Any republican willing to do that voted to impeach after j6 and got primaried. They have been evaporatively cooled past the line for anyone to engage in career sacrifice.
What I’m naively optimistic for is a center Republican to come forward with a deal with center house Dems and a few center Reps and create a coalition governments.
Basically trade a few committee seats and offer a floor vote on a couple Dem bills.
They don’t even have to guarantee passage. And everyone can win the messaging when the bills don’t pass. GOP can say they are “fighting DEM spending and waste” DEM can say “they are trying to make your life better but those dirty GOP are ruining it”
Word leaked that the dems had 1 yea vote from the GOP. That could just be a savvy operative acting as a chaos agent, but it could be that has already started to happen.
I would expect best case they would gavel him in only to “get shit done” with Israel to take the pressure off, but it’s possible.
They shouldn’t use Jefferies. They should put up a Democrat like Angie Craig (D, MN), Don Davis (D, NC) or Bishop Sanford (D, GA) a significantly more “blue dog style” Democrat that a R who votes for can go back to their state and justify woth something like, “There are Republicans who are just there to muck things up. I had a choice between a moderate Democrat who could free us up to assist Israel and Ukraine now or a Republican who would take months to confirm if ever!” You can defend that politically, especially in a farm state like Nebraska or Kansas where that type of pragmatism is still culturally values.
Not a bad idea. It also shows a willingness to compromise and work across the aisle from Democrats, which is a striking difference from the Republican mess. I don’t expect Republicans to take it, but it’s important to show people that Democrats want to act in good faith here.
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Posting again.
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.
Pj o’rourke
Jordan would be a shit-show of massive proportions. Which is saying something given that it would have to beat out the current shit-show.
EDIT: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/us/politics/scalise-jordan-house-speaker.html
Even though the votes on Thursday had clearly stacked up against Mr. Scalise, some of his allies were still surprised by his withdrawal announcement in a closed-door meeting. Several openly wept.
Congress being a circus shouldn’t be funny, but holy shit I lost it at that one.
No way he’d ever get enough votes, too many moderates loath him, and his sordid past hasn’t even begun to hit the mainstream media news cycle yet
Put another way, dems only need 4 to get minority control of the speakership….
… why the hell they’re not negotiating, I dunno….
GOP needs to exhaust every bad option before doing the right thing.
“Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted” -Winston Churchill
Also, Winston Churchill: “Fuck those Indians and Africans”
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There’s no way the Republican party allows a minority speaker. There’s no clearer sign that they’ve lost control and power than that. The party of Falling In Line can’t pick a speaker with a majority is so pathetic.
Once it becomes clear that the party is being held hostage by a handful of zealots hellbent on fucking over america, the not-exactly-moderates might be persuaded to peel off. at that point, they’re goint to get pushed to call the session to order and dems get to put their candidate forward.
at that point, they don’t really have a choice. Remember, the dems only need 4 votes to get that done.
and if ethics can’t win out, the Dems can always bribe people. Republicans never met a bribe they didn’t like.
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I mean what makes them look more out of control and powerless? Still being unable to decide months later, or compromising with Democrats?
From what I can tell from polling, the general public is really tired of partisanship. This may be a golden opportunity for Democrats.
House minority leader Jeffries has said they are open to negotiating, but the republicans aren’t going to allow a democrat as leader when they have the majority. As dysfunctional of a majority it is. Maybe in 3 weeks as time starts running out we’ll get closer to across the aisle talks. But things are so partisan now that the rep base will eat their own people alive if they dare gasp compromise.
They likely are, but they’re not going to do it out in the open when it would allow other Republicans to put pressure on the ones they’re courting.
I meant pubies courting dems-as-a-block. The pubies are divided, the democrats aren’t (so much). if 20 or so are refusing to tow the party line… and they are… they’re gonna have to go to the dems and beg… and it’s going to be painful (from the pubie perspective) because McDumface already reneged on a deal with the dems to get the stop gap done.
And he was the frontrunner. The only other person running was Jordan, with way less support.
With how fractioned the House Republicans are right now, Democrat support for Hakeem Jeffries technically makes him the frontrunner right now even without the majority.
Not that that matters, since a majority is needed. It will make next month and the expiry of the 45 day budget bill extension interesting if there’s no Speaker to even bring it to a vote.
How many Republicans would be to vote for Jeffries? Seems like about 15-20 Democrats would need to support Scalise for him to get the vote.
Exactly. Less than a hands worth are needed to flip things the other way. Let’s hope there’s still enough Tuesday-type Republicans to get that to happen.
The republican party is currently an optics nightmare. I don’t have words for how awful the optics will become if the government shuts down and they don’t even have a speaker. Republicans LOVE blaming democrats for shutdowns even though it’s always republicans that refuse to negotiate, but this time it will be truly 100% on them, and unavoidably so.
I don’t doubt for a second that they won’t still try to blame Biden somehow. As we’ve seen with Fox News, it doesn’t need to be true, they just need to repeat it enough times and people will believe it’s true.
Republican leadership seems to know now that it doesn’t work, and they get the majority of the blame.
The party is in an existential and optical nightmare. Polls show the Republican base fairly split on McCarthy’s removal. I think it was something like 37% approving. McCarthy was an incredibly tenuous compromise candidate, and everyone knew he wouldn’t be able to govern without that gavel going away.
McCarthy was just a bandaid on a festering wound, and now Republicans are paralyzed to address it.
Honestly, at this stage, I really wish the Democrats would just pick a (relatively) moderate republican who reaches across the aisle sometimes. I know there isn’t a single member of the house who votes with the Democrats over I believe 40% (28% last I checked was highest? Been a few years) but tap somebody in that range so they can just point to them and tell Republicans “this is what compromise looks like. We are actually trying to help you and we know who we would like to see. We are not just obstructing the process.“ The Republicans still would not coalesce behind the person, we all know it. But that would 100% put the ball in their court.
And hey, if they surprise us all, that’s fantastic news. We did not end up with Scalise or Jordan and perhaps we can start to see a little movement across the aisle for the first time in god knows how long. It would also eliminate the threat of people like Gaetz.
I enjoy watching the Republican party eat itself, but that would be a pretty huge victory regardless. And this show will not go on forever.
The Republican party needs to end. Prolonging it’s miserable existence with an olive branch burdens millions of Americans with crackpots, zealots, conmen, and losers.
Not without concessions, and the GOP has made those instant death to their party. The only people who can do it will need to come out as independents, and be in swing district’s.
4 “seats are in danger” Republicans should reach across the aisle to dems, get deep concessions (maintiaing impeachment bullshit, maintaining most if not all commitee seats/etc) and vote for jeffries.
f ET thikkvff
I get your point, but a house speaker has never, ever been voted out before, yet here we are. A house speaker hasent taken more than one vote to be selected for literally 100 yrs, but here we are.
These are unprecedented times. Dems wouldn’t compromise because their party isn’t fractured, no matter how much media wants to gin up comflict. The GOP is, and when you have their level of dysfunction, you have to turn to where you can actually get votes. Right now, thats the dems.
I honestly dont expect Jeffies to be selected here. At most, some actually moderate GOP rep might get dem votes after some big consessions. Still, we are in uncharted waters. Shit very well might get weird.
They voted him out knowing a republican would replace him. Gaetz and them are absurd but they are not going to literally hand the reins to the democrats. It’s not happening. I would put money on it. Jeffries will not be considered by the GOP.
After reading the politico article about the right wing media, I’m kinda tempted to call into Mark Levin’s show to congratulate him on pushing the Republican party towards the fate of the Whig party.
That facist fuck was the catalyst that pushed all of the radio, TV, and online right wing forums into Cuckoo land.
“If you see smoke it’s not a speaker, someone just set the place on fire,” GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson with a literally 🔥 vibe check.
This for the folks that have forgotten, was trumps whitehouse doctor that said he may live to 200 because hes so healthy, and was credibly accused by the Pentagon of being drunk on the job and of sexual harassment of his staff after they interviewed 78 witnesses. He resigned, and then won a seat in congress in Texas.
So if yall motherfuckers ever thought of running for congress and gave up for literally any reason, just remember old “harrassy the drunky doc” ronny jackson and try again.
He traded his last shred of dignity for the seat but most normal people would pull their punches and keep their dignity.
Can’t send military aid to Israel while the house is speaker-less. By the time a speaker gets chosen, we might not want to send (military) aid.
Who do they even go to, Emmer the majority whip? Has he been House of Cards-ing everybody this whole time?
Another one bites the dust
Ha Ha \
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Republicans are worried that Scalise is facing grim prospects of becoming speaker, an impasse that threatens to prolong the GOP’s leadership crisis that has left the House paralyzed and unable to move on any legislation.
Former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Jordan, was sour on Scalise’s speakership candidacy in a Fox News Radio interview, pointing to the House majority leader’s recent cancer diagnosis.
As the number of holdouts has trended in the wrong direction, some House Republicans are weighing whether it is time to move onto other options as the pressure mounts to address pressing needs like the war in Israel and government funding.
Another idea that came up during the closed door conference meeting was whether Republicans should try to expand the powers of interim Speaker Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, so the House can pass legislation, like a resolution for Israel, multiple lawmakers told CNN.
A group of more centrist Republicans are circulating a letter asserting that McHenry should have more temporary power, sources told CNN – a sign of desperation as the GOP scrambles to coalesce around a speaker.
On Wednesday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said after meeting with Scalise that she felt “comfortable” enough to support his speaker nomination, after he spoke to her about the Oversight Committee’s impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden.
The original article contains 1,537 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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