Kevin McCarthy lost three more votes to be the speaker of the House, with his leadership bid held up by a group of hardliners who wanted to impose a variety of rules that would have the effect of making law. The holdouts have come together to support Rep. Donalds.
The spectacle has left the GOP in disarray and it is the first time since 1923 that the majority party has needed to hold multiple ballots to pick a speaker. There is no obvious way to resolve the standoff. There are a lot of possibilities for the next speaker of the House.
Something will have to give if McCarthy keeps losing votes. "At some point, it may require a bipartisan solution, and I don't like being held hostage," said one of the leading Republican moderates.
No law says that the speaker must come from the party with the most seats. It is unlikely that this consensus choice would come from the Democrats. "It's me, or some Freedom Caucus bomb-thrower, or complete mayhem, that's what I'd say to the Democrats if I had the chance," said bacon. If someone like bacon, who has a purchase on the other side of the aisle, could get all the Democrats to support him, he would only have to convince five other Republicans to join him. If any Democrats don't sign on to the compromise, the math gets more complicated. If Democrats are unwilling to make a deal, more Republicans will need to be brought with him.
It would take a lot of power-sharing with the Democrats to look like a parliamentary-style coalition government. Before Champ Clark became speaker, Democrats and Republicans had hammered out a coalition government that was ready to go. In discussing why the U.S. has never seen a true coalition government, constitutional scholar Mark Tushnet argues that even at times like during the budget standoffs of President Barack Obama's second term, the Constitution doesn't lie.
There is only one thing standing between the US and a coalition government in the House. In countries with experience with coalition rule, like Germany, no party has won a majority in the parliament since 1957.
McCarthy is being grinded down by the holdouts because they want him to look weak and give up and step aside. They would introduce a new candidate, not a Freedom Caucus stalwart but a more establishment candidate willing to capitulate to their rules demands. It is a sign that the demands are more important than the speaker's name. The whole thing was about revenge against McCarthy if he offered the same package as him. McCarthy is doing better than anyone else on PredictIt, so the chatter is likely to continue.
It's all up to someone, like former President Trump, or someone outside of the House, to make a nomination. The speaker of the House doesn't need to be a sitting member of the House in order to be in office. The speaker is not a figurehead, but a person who knows how lawmaking works and how to influence it. You can't expect them to throw strikes when you call one in from the pen.
It's much easier for two hundred and twenty-two people to convince 20 people they're wrong than it is for 20 people to convince 202 people they're right. McCarthy promised in a closed-door meeting of the GOP caucus before the first votes were taken that he would be dug in.
McCarthy has lost a vote since the first ballot, while his opponents have voted for other candidates. The 20 holdouts stayed together for three votes on Wednesday. Unless McCarthy agrees to more of their demands, it's hard to see how they will budge.
McCarthy and his allies can block anyone from becoming speaker if they want to. McCarthy would like to see the number of opponents decrease. The last time this happened was 100 years ago in 1923, when Republican Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts won the election. Gillett received more votes on the first ballot than his closest competitor in the party.
This is the most unlikely scenario. Under current rules, Jeffries, the presumptive minority leader, can't become speaker if he has Democratic votes. The last time the threshold for becoming speaker of the House was lowered to a plurality was in 1858. Six times, Jeffries has won that plurality. If GOP leadership doesn't agree to the holdout's demands, Gaez doesn't care if Jeffries becomes speaker.
A minority government led by a Democrat might not be more functional over the next two years than a majority one. The assurance that the House wouldn't spend all of its time investigating President Biden would be a good one for Democrats. It would be a bitter pill for Republicans to swallow and they would have a hard time explaining to their voters why they won a majority in the House.
The rules package needs to be passed by the House by January 13th. As the deadline approaches, expect more drama. The United States is without a national legislature until a resolution is reached.
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