The House has been without a speaker for 22 days, and there’s no end in sight since Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., led a group of eight Republicans who voted to remove Kevin McCarthy from the top House position, joined by 208 Democrats.
Yesterday House Majority Whip Tom Emmer won the GOP nomination for speaker after five rounds of voting by secret ballot.
However, he removed his name from consideration before a floor vote could be held after 26 House Republicans indicated that he wouldn’t have their vote.
That would have placed him at least 20 votes shy of being elected in a floor vote.
Many of those Republican lawmakers who indicated they wouldn’t support Emmer may have been influenced by former President Trump.
The 45th president said it would be a "tragic mistake" to support the Minnesota lawmaker's speaker bid. "He is totally out of touch with Republican voters," he wrote on social media.
One of those GOP holdouts was Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana.
"I hope we can find a different choice," said Banks. "Tom Emmer's not a conservative."
Last week in the process Trump endorsed House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, but he didn’t make the cut when it came to a vote by the full House.
So where to go from here?
My previous thoughts on the subject still hold:
- The conference should make it a rule that all members will vote on the floor for the person nominated in conference — no exceptions.
- They should also end the ability of giving a single House member the power to propose a motion to "vacate the chair" — to call for a floor vote of no confidence in the current speaker.
But before then they may wanna just get together and chill out.
Everyone crack open a beer (no, not Bud Light — that’s the other team’s brew), then sit back and listen to some tunes — maybe the Rolling Stones.
Maybe their hit single, "You Can’t Always Get What You Want."
The last lines of the chorus go:
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime
You'll find
You get what you need
They should sip their Shiner Bocks, nod to one another, and let the lyrics sink in until they reach that "a ha!" realization. That should be easy given how past votes have played out.
Jordan threw his support behind Steve Scalise of Louisiana when the conference nominated him a few weeks back, telling reporters, "We need to come together and support Steve."
Likewise, Scalise supported Jordan after his nomination.
They may also wish to ignore any advice from the former president. After all, this is “not his circus, not his monkeys.”
The Calvin Coolidge Project reported at 5:48 pm that after Emmer’s decision to remove his name from consideration, "There are six candidates running for Speaker of the House," and listed them as follows:
Byron Donalds (Fla. 19)
Mike Johnson (La.-04)
Kevin Hern (Okla. -1)
Chuck Fleischmann (Tenn.-03)
Mark Green (Tenn-07)
Roger Williams (Texas-25)
Later last evening it was down to the first two: Donalds and Johnson. After a whirlwind late night session they whittled it down to Johnson.
Everyone may have their own personal favorite, but like Trump, it’s "not our circus, not our monkeys."
The last time the House was rudderless for any significant time was in 1855, when it took a record 133 ballots over the course of nearly two months, to elect Nathanial Banks as speaker.
At the time Banks was a member of the American Party, which merged into the Republican Party a few years later.
Now’s not the time for record breaking — not that one anyway.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.