Well there is that but i dunno, give them something they want that isn’t illegal; head of a committee, quid pro quo on a bill they want passed etc. They must have a button to be pushed somewhere.
In the US system, that would be akin to crossing the floor. There would be no coming back from that vote, and I don’t think there are many Republicans contemplating that.
There has been a big shift in the House over the past 10 years that has got rid of reasonable republicans. There are several dynamics, but the result is those who might have been reasonable have either lost their job when GOP voters voted for someone else less reasonable, or they jumped on the stupid train in self-interest after seeing their peers lose their job. Even the ones the press like to pretend are reasonable arent. Steve Scalise, the current #2 guy int he Caucus, has described himself proudly as David Duke without the baggage. On the days after the Jan6th riot he was publicly blaming Pilosi (not in her remit) for not calling out the National Guard to help despite being shown to have been in the room with her when she was in fact trying to get those efforts moving.
Look at the response to the Trump impeachments - 10 GOP members of the house voted to impeach trump over the insurrection, which itself is a marker of how twisted and incapable of reason the caucus is that only 10 of 200+ did it. Today, only one cycle later, I think all but 2 lost their jobs over it with the party deciding to choose a different nominee from the party to run in this cycle.
There are lots of theoretical outs, but this isnt the west wing. The only realistic one is the GOP caucus find a person they can get their entire majority behind, but you’re in chaos theory territory as the people you’re having to get onside with whatever compromise candidate that is dont have real objectives here other than the chaos…the execution of their power to gum up the works.
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Add the fact that a lot of otherwise reasonable GOP have jumped to the lobbying trade to avoid precisely that squeeze between their principles and their voters. The real deal-makers are gone, the House caucus is dominated by ideologues.
Ah, right. So basically, never reallygoing to happen then.
I think there is likely an alternative candidate already identified who is currently just playing the role of supporting McCarthy publicly before they reluctantly agree to take a nomination when asked in the interest of party unity. But that is still very much in the territory of expecting the Face Eating Leopard Party to not try to eat your own face.
It’s relevant to the current situation that we are now at least 30 years into a period in which the leader of the house GOP, often times leading the majority as the actual Speaker of the House, has been utterly incapable of controlling his own party the way that position is supposed to be able to. This specific way its playing out now with the failure to secure a vote is novel, but the overall situation in which the members refuse to be led is now a multi-generational thing. It’s not relevant to the point, but the only person who did not succumb to this was a guy called Denny Hastert in the W Bush era, and was a serial sex offender/pedophile.
In the same vein ;
Ding Ding : Round 7
I wonder how many of the twenty will come over now after last night’s humiliating concessions. However many it is , it still won’t include the five ‘never kevins’ , so will we see some procedural shenanigans to help him over the line , or will the moment arrive when his own party convinces him to do the decent thing and step aside ?
0 and 7?
Don’t be a wuss.
Admit it.
You meant every word.
Every. Word.
What an ass.
It’s been an on-off idea on Fox for pretty much the entire Biden tenure, and Gaetz has publicly supported it numerous times. Given there are no principals at play for most of these holds out other than the theatre and trying to grab attention, that he’s do this is not much a surprise.
I do suspect we’ll start seeing some other names of people not in congress start to get raised sooner than later.
Bit odd since Trump told them to just let McCarthy win
Made concessions. Still only got 201 votes. What is the point of concessions if he picks up no additional votes.
He’s already made a ton of asked for concessions in the period leading up to the first vote and it didnt matter, because it was always about being able to do this rather than the concessions they were asking for.
The anti-government party reaching its final destination, refusing to govern/legislate
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So that whole child trafficking thing just didn’t stick to Matt Gaetz then? It’s almost like they only performatively care about the safety of children.
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Apparently, Frank Lampard is considering his options.
