If any of y’all are following the House Speaker Vote Debacle, among the people you should probably be following are Molly Reynolds, Sarah Binder, Josh Huder and Matt Glassman, as well as whoever they are talking with on their various threads in their various places.
It seems to me that there may well be a significant number of House Republicans who are fully committed to voting against any “establishment” politician for Speaker—which is a problem because Speaker of the House of Representatives is inherently an establishment position.
A certain political scientist (and friend of Your Humble Blogger) has said that the use of the word “establishment” (in the context of Party Politics) makes everyone stupider, as nobody has any idea what is or is not the “establishment”. There is a lot to that, but also: vaddevah it means, it's the Speaker's job to be it.
Having said that, it seems to me that there are there are always (or almost always) news items about how the new majority is in disarray, and that eventually they all get together and support the Leader—certainly both times Pelosi became Speaker that happened, and I am pretty sure it happened for Boehner in 2011. It doesn't look like that’s what is happening now, but it might be—by mid-afternoon this could all look like nothing.
Even if that’s true, though, it’s very hard for me to see how McCarthy keeps his caucus together for two years. But it’s even harder to see how Scalise or anyone else does a better job at it.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
It occurs to me that the Speakership stands in contrast to the Presidency in that the skills for becoming President are not exactly the skills needed for being a successful President. The skills for becoming Speaker—essentially, coalition-building, vote-counting and the herding of legislative cats along with a kind of persistence that my father (may he rest in peace) called sitzfleisch—are pretty much the necessary skills for doing the job.
Thanks,
-V.