House Republicans are fighting amongst themselves over who will be the next speaker, seemingly unaware of the message of government dysfunction they are delivering at a time of escalating international problems.
On Wednesday, Republican senators and representatives chose Steve Scalise as their candidate for the position of vice president. However, by evening, it was evident that the Louisiana Republican and current majority leader was having trouble securing the necessary votes to keep the gavel.
According to AWN’s Manu Raju and Melanie Zanona, party officials still wanted to take a vote on the speakership in the full chamber on Thursday, but senior Republicans were still debating what to do should Scalise lack the support to win the job.
One Republican lawmaker stated, “Steve is nowhere near 217,” referring to the number of votes Scalise needs to become speaker. Several GOP insiders, however, are sceptical that Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who came in second to Scalise on Wednesday’s secret ballot, can bring the party together and win the top position. As a result, the door may be open for a compromise candidate to gain traction.
Following last week’s removal of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy by eight Republicans voting with Democrats, the situation in the House has only worsened.
Conceptually, Scalise is about to overtake all other Republicans in Washington in terms of influence. If he succeeds in getting the required number of votes, he may end up compromising too much with extremists in order to become speaker of the House.
If this sounds similar, it’s because Scalise is weighing the same options that McCarthy did during the 15 rounds of voting it took him to become speaker in January, and that ultimately led to his removal last week.
There were also rising indications on Wednesday night of a fight to become majority leader, a position that would become vacant if Scalise were elected speaker. Reps. Tom Emmer (MN), Kevin Hern (OK), and Byron Donalds (FL) are just a few of the many who intend to run. It has upset some GOP leaders that the infighting has taken attention away from the more pressing need to select a speaker.
The difficulty of Scalise’s task became clear after he narrowly defeated Jordan on Wednesday by a vote of 113 to 99. He still lacked the 217 votes, or a majority of the current House, necessary to become speaker. That means the most he can lose is four votes in the Republican Conference, which has lived up to its worst stereotypes this week.
Scalise told reporters, “We still have work to do,” a stunning understatement before embarking into individual talks with members who have refused to back him but often struggle to describe exactly what they want. Their demands and political posturing are typical of the Republican Party in the Trump age, which is more interested in destroying institutions than in building them back up.
On Wednesday night, Rep. Scalise stayed up late trying to rally enough support to become speaker of the House. Despite the hardline Ohio Republican’s promise to nominate his colleague, several members of the conference have already said they plan to vote for Rep. Jim Jordan on Thursday, when a vote in the House is hoped for but not guaranteed by party leaders.
The regicidal week that followed McCarthy’s ouster has highlighted the difficulties of the GOP’s narrow House majority, which it won in the November elections, and the deep divisions within the party that make the conference unable to manage. To the moderate voters in swing districts who are crucial to keeping the House in 2024, the party’s current leadership void sends a sense of incompetence. After the horrible Hamas incursion into Israel, the House chamber was left vacant, sending a message of indifference and giving propaganda triumphs to those who say the United States is losing its global influence.
Texas Representative and chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul told AWN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday, “We need to govern and we can’t govern without a speaker.” Playing games with this situation will only encourage our opponents, such as Chairman Xi, who claims democracy is flawed. Putin and the Ayatollah are both big fans of this.
The road to triumph for Scalise is fraught with danger.
This is nothing new for Scalise. He was recently treated for blood cancer after recovering from severe injuries he sustained in a shooting during a congressional baseball practise in 2017. For the Louisianan to earn a long-term speakership, he must avoid the pitfalls that McCarthy encountered during his own laborious hunt for a governing majority in January. A single member’s ability to call for a vote to remove the previous speaker was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida triggered the trip wire, and seven other Republican colleagues joined him in voting him out of office.
It’s unclear what, if anything, Scalise can offer McCarthy’s detractors, given that he is more conservative and popular in the GOP conference than McCarthy ended up being and is recognised as a strong fundraiser. The Californian’s true red lines were his refusal to cause a default on US debt and his refusal to shut down the government. In the recent months, when both of these outcomes seemed certain, McCarthy exploited Democratic votes to advance stopgap remedies, a practise that ultimately cost him his position as speaker. Nothing he did to placate the far right—including inserting conservative culture war agendas into spending bills and booting high-profile Democrats off of crucial committees and even starting an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden—made a difference.
On Wednesday, several Republican defectors said they would not support Scalise, leaving him with a significantly smaller margin of victory than he needed to win.
Concerns about Scalise’s health were voiced by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has spent a lot of time building a relationship with McCarthy and is a staunch Trump supporter who is more ideologically and temperamentally aligned with Jordan than with Scalise. Greene told AWN’s Manu Raju, “Unfortunately, Steve is going through a cancer battle of his own,” referencing the death of her father, whom she said she lost to illness. And because of my high regard for Steve, I hope he will devote himself fully to overcoming it.
After learning that Scalise had spoken to a White nationalist group founded by ex-KKK grand wizard David Duke before he entered Congress, South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace declared she could not vote for him. Scalise expressed regret for his actions and offered an apology. AWN’s Jake Tapper asked Mace why he voted to remove McCarthy, and Mace said, “I’m trying to reconcile it, and right now I can’t.”
In a party that celebrates rebels and outsiders, Scalise may be suffering for being associated with the House GOP establishment. Despite visiting with Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert in private, he was unable to sway her from her strong stance. Boebert has expressed his primary concerns over the administration of the facility. “I believe our conference’s leadership is the source of its problems.”
Senior Republicans on Wednesday night were becoming more and more sceptical that Scalise would ever get enough votes to win the gavel. One powerful Republican in the House remarked, “He has no path to 217,” but only on the condition of anonymity.
A reaction against extremists
Some moderate Republicans are frustrated by the situation since their reelection elections in 2019 will determine whether or not the Republicans retain control of the House.
Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, one of the 208 Democrats who helped to depose McCarthy, said, “The majority of the majority has been disregarded by a handful of members repeatedly and flagrantly, and as a result, we deposed… our speaker a week ago with 208 Democrats.” Lawler called for the extremists who led the coup to be held accountable. “The idea that somehow rearranging the deck chairs here is going to fix the problem or that somehow Kevin McCarthy was the problem is laughable,” he told AWN.
If Scalise does manage to sneak into the speaker’s chair, he may only be at the beginning of his challenges given the character of the unstable Republican conference. As the Senate and White House are both currently controlled by Democrats, Republicans will want their new leader to deliver massive spending cuts and legislation to satisfy their aspirations.
Even if Scalise succeeds in the long run, according to Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, he will be confronted with the same intractable challenges that McCarthy was unable to resolve, beginning with a probable government shutdown next month.
The change in who is doing the work has not made things simpler, Blessing added. “The new speaker will be taking over the old speaker’s inbox.”