The House Speaker’s Vacancies: Replacing the No. 2 Rep. Steve Scalise with a Speaker of the House
The House Republicans wanted to quickly select a Speaker of the House and quell the tension within their ranks, but by Thursday the situation seemed to have gotten worse.
Less than 24 hours after a narrow majority of House Republicans selected Steve Scalise, R-La., as “speaker designate,” his chances of winning enough votes to be elected speaker in a vote on the House floor seemed to be shrinking. Any candidate would need roughly 217 votes to be approved.
It is unclear if Jordan will fall to the same fate as Scalise, as winning the nomination is far different than winning on the House floor. If all sitting members are present, the nominee will need 217 Republican votes. There are lots of Republicans.
Scalise can only lose a handful of Republicans if he hopes to secure a majority. And as the vacancy drags on, it is raising concerns about not only Republicans’ ability to govern, but their ability to convince voters that they deserve to stay in power next year.
We are living in a dangerous world. The world is on fire. Our adversaries like how we do things, according to McCaul. “We need to fill the chair with a speaker. Every day that goes by it gets more dangerous.”
They will need a speaker to give congress more aid to Israel, warns McCaul. He warned that instability undermines the U.S. image abroad.
After a historic vote to remove their own speaker last week, they appeared on the verge of a quick recovery on Wednesday when G.O.P. lawmakers met and voted narrowly to nominate Mr. Scalise, the No. 2 Republican, to succeed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. It became clear very quickly that Republicans were not going to support him on the House floor. In quitting the fight on Thursday night, Mr. Scalise said some of his colleagues had “their own agendas.” Some were dug in for Representative Jim Jordan, the hard-right Ohio Republican who co-founded the House Freedom Caucus and challenged Mr. Scalise for the nomination, falling just 14 votes short.
Even members who supported and worked to win votes suggested the only way to move forward would be to get a vote on the floor.
“We’re all over the map,” said Scalise during a Twitter equivalence session on Thursday, March 14. In search of a resolution of sclaise’s cancer
“We need to know what the numbers are,” Womack said. People can say one thing and then send a second message. We are all over the map on this thing.
Womack’s comments come after a number of members, including those who voted for Scalise, started airing concerns on Twitter or in conversations with reporters.
While he liked both Jordan and sclaise, Trump expressed concern about sclaise’s health, saying “he’s got a very serious form of cancer.” It was a serious problem, and I want Steve to get well, but I don’t know how he can do the job with the disease.
Trump endorsed McCarthy in the beginning, but he still had to endure 14 rounds of votes before Trump made a final decision to support McCarthy.
Lawmakers have been able to show a unified front in the past during crises, if only temporarily, due to personal and political differences. But there was no sign on Thursday that Republicans were ready to end their bickering despite the press of world events and it was unclear how they could right the ship after Mr. Scalise’s wrenching decision.
Trying to stem the momentum against him, Mr. Scalise on Thursday had summoned his colleagues for yet another private meeting that stretched long into the afternoon in what one Republican described as an airing of slights big and small worthy of Festivus, a parody holiday. Lawmakers warned that they were hurting their own image and the nation.
Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who is up for reelection, said that it sent a terrible signal if his party is deemed to be incapable of governing. “We’re not a governing body and we should be.”
Concerns about what’s happening as Israel engages with Hamas and Russia are real. During a Senate vacation in Europe, Chris Coons was questioned about the U.S. commitment in those regions and the instability in the House.
Reply to Scalise’s First Representation in the House and the Issue of Speaker’s Correlations with the Majority Leader
House Republicans will try again this afternoon to nominate and unify around a candidate for speaker, after their initial nominee Majority Leader Steve Scalise failed to consolidate party support.
Scott, a Republican from Georgia, is challenging Jordan in a surprise bid. “We are in Washington to legislate, and I want to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people,” he announced on social media.
Jordan, 59, has served in Congress since 2007 and has evolved from hyper-partisan outsider who helped start the House Freedom Caucus to hyper-partisan insider, with a seat at the leadership, a committee gavel, a close relationship with former President Trump and a leading role in the ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Biden.
He said that he does not believe Jordan can get the votes for the vote on the House floor. “I don’t think he’ll get probably close to 217.”
The congressman said the candidate forum matters and that he would see who else ran. The debate actually matters. The policies are important.
If the nominee was within 20 votes, the vote would move quickly to the floor and pressure holdouts. “In the end, I think the great equalizer is the floor, and the great clarifier is the floor, the lights, the pressure and the public opinion.”
“I can tell you [my constituents’] priority is that we have a functioning government,” Garcia said. If that means that I support a more conservative than I am, and if that means that he is the only one, then I’m willing to do that.
Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. said he was not planning to vote for Jordan. In his view, Jordan undermined Scalise’s nomination and didn’t work hard enough to consolidate support for Scalise.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said he was concerned that Jordan’s supporters refused to back Scalise on Thursday and told reporters, “when you reward bad behavior you get more of it.” Other supporters of Scalise expressed similar concerns, and the mood among House GOP lawmakers was tense as members filed out of the meeting with many saying they had no idea when their party could coalesce around a speaker and get back to work.
A small group of Republicans has floated the idea of looking for a consensus candidate that would be endorsed by the Democratic Party. When we’re at the end of the well, we are going to need to come up with a bipartisan solution. He said “a lot of our folks are in denial so you’ve never going to get 8-10 folks on board.”
Top Democrats used the opportunity to press Republicans to discuss a bipartisan government. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has publicly offered to help Republicans elect a speaker, which he reiterated Thursday in a PBS interview.
Jeffries said that if the speaker promised more Democratic seats on committees and pledged to bring legislation with bipartisan support to the floor, Democrats could provide votes to Elect a Speaker and change the rules to make it easier to remove a sitting speaker from power.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters on Friday that there are generally 300 lawmakers willing to work together on big issues. We are worried about a group that has been holding the Congress of the United States hostage. They should walk across the aisle and ask what they can do.