Drama In the Rotunda Involving No Llama. Bumma.

You know, when a political party wins control of the House Of Representatives, they tend to already have their ducks in a row when it comes time to vote for the Speakership. Usually it's the guy (or gal) who'd been leading the gang of congresscritters while in minority opposition, so it ought to be a no-brainer.

So here we are in 2023 with the Republicans regaining control of the House and proving they got no brains at all. Via Brad Dress at the Hill:

Nine House conservatives expressed doubts about electing Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the next Speaker of the House, calling for a “radical departure from the status quo” ahead of the Tuesday floor vote.

In a Sunday letter obtained by The Hill, Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) led seven other hard-line Republican House members and members-elect in calling McCarthy’s responses to their pre-election demands “insufficient...”

McCarthy won a Republican conference vote for the Speakership last month but must garner the support of a majority of the House on the floor Tuesday to secure the position...

Under other circumstances, a small number (nine among 435 congresscritters) like this would be easily ignored while the Speaker-to-be makes arrangements to secure the 218-vote minimum to clear the hurdle. Unfortunately, the Red Wave Ebbtide the Republicans suffered this midterm gave the Republicans a mere 5-seat majority (and that's with a guy in George Santos who's going to get extradited to Brazil sooner than they thought). It's one of the narrowest party majorities in House history, and it's the narrowest during the most partisan division between factions since the Civil War.

It's kind of an open secret - hell, I blogged about it years ago - that the ever-ambitious McCarthy was an embarrassment of a leader, committing faux pas in a way that denied him a Speakership back then, and he was only Minority Leader during the 2018-22 Democratic cycle because nobody else wanted the job and he still had some favors to call in. 

Well, now McCarthy is trying to win over the more extremist, pro-trump members of the GOP, and he's finding out the Freedom Caucus and other rabble-rousers are hungrier for power than he realized.

Tengrain noted this back in December, when the insurgents were issuing demands that McCarthy cannot or dare not deliver:

The letter from HFC Chair SCOTT PERRY (R-Pa.), Republican Reps. CHIP ROY (Texas), DAN BISHOP (N.C.), ANDREW CLYDE (Ga.), PAUL GOSAR(Ariz.) and Reps.-Elect ELI CRANE (Ariz.) and ANDY OGLES (Tenn.) makes several demands of any would-be Republican speaker, including that they:

Reinstate the “motion to vacate” — basically, allowing any member of the House to force a vote to oust the sitting speaker. The letter notes that the rule was “in place for a reason from 1801 to 2018”;

Provide the House with 72 hours of notice on every bill and grant members the ability to amend legislative text;

Promise that Republican leadership and associated outside entities (like the McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leader Fund) will not wade into primaries;

Give conservatives more representation on so-called “A” committees, including the House Rules panel;

Use must-pass bills to try to secure a number of policy wins, including: (1) leveraging the annual defense authorization to reinstate service members who were dismissed due to their refusal to get the Covid vaccine, (2)forcing any debt ceiling increase to be accompanied by spending cuts, and (3)requiring the farm bill to include cuts to food stamps.

So demand #1 is a culture war item that serves as a MAGA get out of jail card in the military, #2 is to assure that there will be a forced recession if the gubmint cannot stimulate the economy (and don’t kid ourselves, “spending cuts” is the dog whistle for Social Security and Medicare) and #3 is just about cruelty...

This was something I noticed back in the early 2010s, when the "Tea Party" Republicans - made up of the Freedom Caucus leaders of today - were insistent on gutting the federal government during their shutdowns to impose the most amount of cruelty on the poor and working classes as much as possible. THAT hadn't changed. What they're doing now is making sure McCarthy can't pull a Boehner stunt to pass legislation to compromise with a Democratic Senate and White House.

That "Motion to Vacate" is also a kind of "No Confidence" vote that was in the rules for hundreds of years - part of the Jefferson Rules of Order passed down from session to session - that got used several times to undercut Boehner and Paul Ryan during those budget fights, leading to Pelosi and the Dems refusing to set that rule when they retook power in 2018. It's a license to let the backbenchers throw bombs at the party leadership without penalty, and McCarthy was reluctant to bring it back... until this weekend, when he caved on that issue.

Funny thing was, the insurgents - represented by Matt Gaetz at that conference meeting - refused to support McCarthy with that move, insisting on further power. 

Something something, "Moving the Goalposts," victory for wingnuts, repeat.

So we're looking at an eventful Tuesday on Capitol Hill one way or another.

Either McCarthy surrenders on every issue his own party extremists want - which runs the slight risk of irking the remaining moderate caucus members (and yes, there are about 30 of them left) - or he fails to make the Speakership on the first ballot, which makes him look weak before he can do anything about it.

It's something that hasn't happened often, in fact not since 1923 (via Ronald G. Shafer at Stars and Stripes (paywalled)):

Today, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is struggling to win enough votes to be elected speaker when Republicans take narrow control of the House, as he faces opposition from some right-wing members of his party. As a result, it may take more than one ballot for anyone to gain the 218 votes, or the majority of votes cast for candidates, needed to win the speakership. McCarthy has warned fellow Republicans against a floor fight, saying, "If we play games on the floor, Democrats could end up picking who the speaker is."

The last time a speaker election took more than one ballot was in 1923, when Speaker Frederick Gillett (R-Mass.) was reelected on the ninth ballot.

But the longest speaker vote began on Dec. 3, 1855, when the 34th Congress convened. Democrats controlled the Senate, but no party controlled the House after the disintegration of the Whig Party. About a third of House members were Democrats. The rest belonged to a mix of parties, including the new Republican Party. Many were members of the secretive American Party, also known as the Know Nothing party...

Finally, on Feb. 1, 1856, Democrats adopted a new strategy. First, they backed a new speaker candidate, proslavery Rep. William Aiken Jr. (D-S.C.), the 50-year-old son of railroad magnate William Aiken Sr., after whom Aiken, S.C., was named. Second, Democratic leaders announced that they would propose the next day a previously rejected resolution to elect a speaker with only a plurality vote. Under this plan, if a majority of members failed to elect a speaker in three consecutive votes, the candidate who got the most votes on a fourth tally would win.

Aiken was sure to win over enough Southern House members to gain a plurality and the speakership, newspapers reported. "We think we can count 109 votes for Mr. Aiken, if jealousy or something else does not defeat him," a Washington Star correspondent wrote. That night, Democratic President Franklin Pierce congratulated Aiken in advance on his victory...

Talk about counting chickens before they hatched.

The fourth, plurality vote began. As the clerk tallied the total, "the excited crowd on the floor and in the galleries looked on in silence," the Picayune reported. "The suspense at this crisis was agonizing. Every eye turned and every ear inclined with intense interest towards the clerk's desk to hear the result."

Just before 7 p.m., the clerk announced the total: 103 votes for Banks, 100 for Aiken. Some lawmakers who had been expected to switch to Aiken had not come through. "As the result was announced, the audience in the galleries manifest their joy by peal after peal of deafening cheers," the Picayune wrote. "The ladies waved their handkerchiefs wildly and clapped, and [anti-Banks] gentlemen stamped and raved, and swore."

So the lesson here is, Have a Solid Majority That Outnumbers Your Extremist Caucus in the House First.

The speculation about what will happen to McCarthy circles around the uncertainty of where the insurgent votes could go. There is an official challenger in Andy Biggs (AZ), but there's still a possibility the Freedom Caucus members or other factions waiting in the shadows backing the likes of Jim Jordan (OH). There is even the possibility that if not enough House Republicans show up to actually vote, a united effort from the Democratic House members backing newly chosen leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) can place Jeffries in minority control as Speaker.

The Speakership is a powerful office: It sets the committee members (meaning Jeffries could exile the pro-trump Republicans to minor duties that won't affect policies or push for impeachments), oversees floor debates (Jeffries can limit when and how long Republicans can scream for the cameras), and disciplines the House if someone (hint: anybody from the Freedom caucus) gets out of line. Even with the Republicans controlling a slim majority of actual votes, A Speaker Jeffries can limit the amount of damage the Republicans can do.

If this happens - if the Republicans collapse in disarray in failure to control the Speaker's office - things can get very nasty very quick within their own ranks. Accusations of betrayals between the factions could lead to genuine schism, a possible end to the Republican Party itself at the national level.

That's too far to speculate, though. There is often enough self-control among the party leaders to pull back from the brink of their own implosion. It's all about power, and the House Republicans would be foolish to blow apart at the moment of seizing that power for themselves.

Then again, the Freedom Caucus is made up of wingnuts who want to watch the world burn.

Wouldn't hurt to warm up the popcorn.