After the withdrawal of Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) from the GOP House Speaker's race, the chamber has been paralyzed and is unable to push through legislation as a Nov. 17 government funding deadline looms.
Scalise on Thursday threw in the gavel, just one day after he won the party's nomination.
Jim Jordan (R-OH), a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, is the obvious alternative to Scalise. However, even as some rally behind Jordan, his path to the Speaker's gavel is strewn with obstacles. With opposing voices within the party, including Republican Reps. Ann Wagner and Austin Scott, Jordan's fight is shaping up to be just as fierce, if not more so, than Scalise's.
"The problem is, I think there’s enough people that would see what has happened and transpired over the last 40 hours to not support him, that we’re gonna have the same problem with Jordan that we had with Scalise," said Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA). "I think it’s a math problem, frankly. So that’s the challenge we got."
According to Garcia, the conference is "all thrust and no vector."
On Friday, Jordan said he would run again.
Told Rep. Jordan and his team are still working through who will do his nominating speeches — a source familiar says they want to find more moderate members who can appeal to McCarthy allies and Mainstreet Republicans
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) October 13, 2023
“This is a rules meeting. at some point we will segue to nominations. … I will nominate Jim Jordan … which I think will be directly after this. But Jim Jordan is absolutely the right guy to unify the 118th Congress,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson per @JAscholtes
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) October 13, 2023
Behind the scenes, whispers circulate about alternative contenders, including House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. Yet, in the wake of Scalise's abrupt exit, Emmer remains reticent, The Hill reports.
Friday will mark the sixth time in five days that the conference has met as it struggles to find a viable replacement for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was ousted from the position last week after eight Republicans joined Democrats to boot him from the post. Members will consider proposals on how to change the internal conference rules for selecting a new Speaker.
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said the conference is expected to once again consider an amendment from Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) that would require 217 votes within the conference — just enough needed to assure a win on the House floor.
Change the rules?
According to Arrington, "People [are] saying, ‘Well you only have a little more than half the conference.’ It may go up to a higher threshold when people say, ‘Hey, you can get X percent, and we’ll feel better going in.’ So those are just things that have been kicked around."
On Wednesday Republicans killed Roy's move to require 217 votes, enraging the Texan, and fueling resistance to supporting Scalise on the House floor.
The continued inability to rally behind a leader is hardly a new storyline for the House GOP. The echo of past internal disputes serves as a reminder of the party's chronic leadership struggles. As Rep. Dusty Johnson candidly put it, this current situation is but "a continuation of a pretty dysfunctional disease."
The Jarring Reality
As Punchbowl News notes;
The House Republican Conference needs to face this jarring reality: The floor has been shut down for going on two weeks, the federal government runs out of money in a month, our vital ally Israel is involved in an existential war and, due to endless GOP infighting, there is no speaker.
...
Jordan told us walking out of the Thursday night conference meeting that he didn’t have any announcement yet and was simply thinking of Scalise. But shortly after that, Jordan began making calls.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to meet as a conference. I think we will come together behind a candidate and then we will move forward for the good of the country,” Jordan said, referring to the party meeting today. We wonder if Jordan will want to move quickly to an internal party vote for speaker and then onto the floor as soon as today or this weekend.
Before you tweet at us or fire off a nasty email, we’ll say it first — Jordan only got 99 votes in the House Republican Conference’s internal speaker election Wednesday. That’s a huge 118 votes shy of the 217 he’ll need to be speaker. It will be very difficult for Jordan to get there, even with support from Trump and conservative outside groups. And, after this week, there’s bad blood between the Jordan and Scalise camps that will make it even tougher.
According to the report, earlier in the week Jordan royally pissed off Scalise's camp - proposing that if Scalise couldn't get to 217 votes, he would agree to back Jordan and nominate him for the post. Scalise reportedly saw this as a trap, as Jordan could simply convince some of his hard-core supporters to withhold support for Scalise.
Jordan spox Russell Dye had this to say about the exchange:
"This was an entirely cordial conversation and Mr. Scalise said he wanted to go to the floor right away, so Mr. Jordan offered to nominate him on the floor, and requested that if we had to go to the floor and Mr. Scalise didn’t have the votes, he nominate Mr. Jordan, the only other announced candidate for speaker. Mr. Scalise agreed to think about it and said he would call Mr. Jordan in forty-five minutes."
In short, it's gridlock in the House until further notice.
