welcome to the mage hell spiral

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Live Updates: Kevin McCarthy Loses 2nd Vote for Speaker

Nineteen Republicans consolidated their votes behind Jim Jordan of Ohio, while Mr. McCarthy fell short again. Members will take successive v

nytimes.com

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Ok, so here's the deal-

Voting for Speaker is normally kind of a formality. The parties pick their guy, everyone votes on party lines, and ta da.

BUT the Republican lead in the house is so slim now, that about 20 Trump nuts have gone rogue- refusing to vote for McCarthy until McCarthy (who is a more normal Republican) agrees to some extreme right concessions. And so far no one is budging.

Apparently there is no protocol for what to do if a majority can't be reached. They just have to keep voting over and over. (This has happened before, though not since 1923. Once, in 1855 after the Whig Party collapsed, it took 2 months to finally reach a majority vote.)

There's basically 2 ways this goes:

1. the nut job trumpers who are holding things up right now can just keep demanding concessions from Mccarthy for their votes until he agrees, but so far all that's doing is apparently pissing off the more normal Republicans even more.

2. Some of the Democrats could go to McCarthy, ask for some concessions to the center, and break the stalemate by voting for him. (I don't really trust McCarthy with this, and there's a good chance that this would play badly with the Republican base. Unless they can really make Gaetz and Boebert look like the bad guys to their voters)

(It would be even funnier if the most moderate Republicans jumped ship and voted for the democrat just to spite the Trump nuts. But that's a 0% chance)

theinklingofcats

Link of it happening live:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?525065-1/house-ballot-elect-speaker&live=

fandomsandfeminism

Lololol the votes going to fail again.

Ok, so, with 435 voting members, you need 218 for a majority. Republicans have 222 seats- that means if Democrats hold the line (which they have, throwing all 212 of their votes for Jeffries in every vote so far), only 4 Republicans can vote for not-McCarthy for him to win. And so far we are at like 12 votes for Jones.

It looks like McCarthy is LOSING votes.

And Jones (who the Trumpers are rallying behind) is VOTING FOR MCCARTHY, but he can't get the others to listen to him!?

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🤣

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Live Updates: McCarthy Appears to Lose 4th Vote for Speaker

After Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, had fallen short three times on Tuesday, and the House held another vote to find

nytimes.com

And we are back folks- a 4th vote and McCarthy STILL LOST.

At this point, the Republicans seem *done.* Trump even came out and supported McCarthy. Jim Jones, the guy that the nut jobs had been voting for, is supporting McCarthy.

Literally no one even knows *what* these people want. They need to just be disruptive because they can?

Who knew- insurrectionists are actually really fucking bad at...functional government.

fandomsandfeminism

So all of this really underscores an interesting weakness in this need for a majority.

When you have a solid 2 party system, where everyone votes lock step with party, getting a majority is no problem.

If you have a multi-party system where parties regularly have to compromise and ally with each other, you can get to a majority almost always but it takes a little longer (which, I would argue is basically what the Democrats constantly do. They really are a coalition party.)

But the situation that we have now, where we are functionally a 2 party system but one party is splintering but no one can really ally with any other party without it being political suicide? We could get stuck here for a while.

This has happened before. The worst was in 1855- the Whig party had splintered and we effectively had 5 parties (though the 3 smallest mostly worked together) in Congress. After 133 votes over 2 months, they basically gave up and agreed to accept a plurality vote for Speaker.

If the Republicans can't get their ducks in a row, we could be stuck without a functioning House for a while. At this rate, I suspect they'll have to ditch McCarthy and pick someone else (though not whoever the Freedom caucus assholes choose) to claw up enough votes. The possibility of McCarthy cutting a deal with the nutters OR the Democrats doesn't seem likely at all now.

fandomsandfeminism

He's lost again. 🤣

bosstoaster

For some additional context: Part of the reason the MAGA crowd are refusing to budge toward McCarthy is that they see him as an RNC shill - which, tbh, he probably is. He's very tied in with the establishment. And so at this point, they've dug in their heels and there's very little chance of them budging even with concessions. Hell, the concessions McCarthy gave them before all this, up till the day of the first vote, probably helped convince them he's a weak willed patsy who will cave immediately (which he is).

However, the OTHER Republicans are now getting more and more pissed off about being held hostage by the MAGA crowd with basically no end goal (we're all very shocked that the MAGA block would do that, pls pause of gasps). So they're no longer willing to negotiate either. They've specifically turned down the suggestion to hold a Republican meeting over this, citing it would be negatively helpful (aka it would just lead to more fights and more stubbornness).

Dems, because of this, are actually closer to electing a Speaker. They are also getting rowdy. They have brought popcorn and alcohol (which is hilarious) and have started shouting during speeches when they disagree (even MORE hilarious, especially when it's round 6 going on round 7).

Honestly, crazy as it sounds, it's possible that one side or the other will cave and vote Dem, or that the Dems will get some concession that makes them willing to bend to McCarthy (but no way to the Freedom Caucus/MAGA bloc, not after everything).

This is such a goddamn funny start to the year.

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The 6th vote just wrapped- same vote as before.