The House Republican majority is stuck, one week after the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with lawmakers unable to coalesce around a new leader in a stalemate that threatens to keep Congress partly shuttered indefinitely.
On Tuesday evening, two leading contenders for the gavel, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, were addressing colleagues behind closed doors at a candidate forum. But they appeared to be splitting the vote.
McCarthy, meanwhile, was openly ready to reclaim the gavel he just lost, but was seen by many as a longshot option unlikely to win back the handful of hardliners who just ousted him.
I stand by what I said last week. The Democrats probably shouldn’t have voted to remove, because it’s going to be months. The republicans don’t give a crap about the government shutting down.
If McCarthy had ever given even one iota of compromise to the democrats they might have voted not to oust him, but instead he constantly split in their faces and poked their eyes. (Just to appease the magas who ultimately ousted him anyway.)
No. I’m sorry. You don’t vote to keep a speaker who worked with you (at the last minute) to pass a bill then turned around and badmouthed you the second the bill passed.