LIVE: House Voting for Speaker of the House
Two weeks without a Speaker. Will the House elect one today?
12:42 PM ET: House is now voting for the Speaker of the House.
1:45 PM: Final count of first round:
Jordan: 200
Jeffries: 212
McCarthy: 6
Zeldin: 3
Scalise: 7
Garcia: 1
Emmer: 1
Cole: 1
Massie: 1I can FEEL the schadenfreude of the leadership staffers in the back of the chamber tallying up the votes against Jordan. They’ve dealt with this for years. Jordan hasn’t.
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) October 17, 2023
1:08 PM ET: Jordan loses the first found.
Previous reporting…
The House of Representatives might vote on its new Speaker this afternoon.
The House opens at 12:00 PM ET. A quorum call would happen to count the members present in the chamber.
The nominating speeches would happen after the quorum call. Then the members take a manual vote when the clerks call them alphabetically.
If all Republicans show up then Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan needs 217 votes, which he does not currently have.
Ciscomani now a YES for Jordan
— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) October 17, 2023
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Comments
I like Nexo speakers, some like Meyers or L’Acoustic… 🙂
This one should be a very easy yes and anyone voting against needs to be retired.
I’m laying odds that behind the scenes, the Republican whip has all the votes lined up already even if the representatives have not spoken publicly. All great public dramas are like that, including diplomatic visits where all the details and agreements are worked out before the heads of state step onto the plane to leave. Now, I could be wrong….
Put em on record. Either way, Ken Buck needs to go.
his parents totally bucked him over
I’ve heard that phones of Representatives have been ringing off the hook all weekend, and hat just may be enough to put Jordan over.
Politicians hate to be put on record. They squirm worse than live bait. Some can even squirm right out of their clothes.
Looks like Spartz is going to chicken out again and vote “present”.
That’s because in her heart she is Ukrainian not American, Possibly a Banderite.
Is it at all possible for the Stupid Party to screw the pooch to the extent that we have Speaker Jefferies?
Not unless RINOs cross over.
Given that much of the GOPe would prefer a Democrat Speaker to anyone to the right of Trotsky, the possibility cannot be ruled out.
Subotai Bahadur
I saw a tweet calling for George Bush as Speaker. shudder
It seems like yesterday Jeb was talking to his mother, “My daddy was president. My big brother was president. Now it’s my turn, right Mama?”
But alas, the country has had enough of the Bushes.
Jordan will fail on the first vote. He’ll more than likely win the second after the no’s have registered their protest.
9 present so he will fail the first round. As for the second I hope you are right but we shall see.
Well, they could hold out until the 15th just for the hell of it.
I can see your second round argument, but if he fails on the second round, I believe they will adjourn for the day
Nah fuck them. Keep them there until they vote
The right way.
All that would do would be to expose them as petty little toddlers throwing a tantrum.
Which is what they are, of course.
McCarthy took 15 votes because he refused to negotiate for very specific promises that were supported by large majorities, and as soon as he finally actually NEGOTIATED, he was elected.
These RINO jackasses are just pitching a fit because WE WANT MCCARTHY BACK.
Which is actually good, Maybe the voters in their districts will finally wake up and get rid of them.
McCarthy was removed because, and only because, Gaetz and his little merry band didn’t like him. To call the opposition to Jordan “petty little toddlers” is to be a hypocrite of the highest order.
More lies from the laughable leftist.
McCarthy was removed because he violated the agreement that let him be Speaker, cut secret side deals with the Democrats and then publicly taunted Gaetz to ‘bring it on’, because he thought his buddies the Democrats had his back.
McCarthy was removed because he was STUPID enough to trust the Democrats with his political future. That alone disqualifies him from ever being in any position of authority ever again.
NY has two RINOs, Molinaro and Lawler, that are total wet noodles. Don’t expect much from them.
The irony is that the same people who were excoriating progressives for acting like children are now engaging in the same behaviour.
That is the GOPe in a nutshell.
s/progressives/populists/
If the Rs can’t get ‘er done today, it will be a big negative with the independent voters who they must have to gain and keep power.
It really doesn’t matter what happens as the Democratic propaganda arm will spin and lie anyway.
Yes, they will, but the fact is that the Rs thus far cannot coalesce around a House Speaker. That’s a fact, and they need to pick one.
It is also not the end of the world darling 🙄 Stop hyperventilating, the Democrat propoganda arm will do that for you, and do it a lot better 😂
The same behavior as the Republicans who voted against McCarthy?
Per C-SPAN, the rumor is that Jordan is going to lose 5 more votes on the second round. I still expect that he’ll at least be closer to a win.
Rumors are rumors, and rumpors from CSPAN are likely to lean to what they want which is the RINOest RiNO of them all.
Oh, screw off. They voted against McCarthy because he refused to negotiate on very specific demands supported by large majorities of actual conservative voters.
These RINO jackholes aren’t even pretending they’re holding out for any actual concession, they’re just pitching a fit.
As Massie put it, McCarthy had to make so many concessions that they ended contradicting each other, making it impossible for him to honor all of them. Of course, I’m not in the caucus like you apparently are, so I don’t know who’s negotiating with whom.
Meh. Better than the last closed door session. Increased the count to 200 from 150ish and that is significant progress by any definition. I suspect there will be more rounds beyond a second vote. Lots of jockeying here, folks staking their flag in opposition but who will eventually come around.
If not then these liberal to moderate holdouts are publicly revealing their hypocrisy over the decades where they insisted the establishment must water down legislation telling more conservative or populist members they had to hold their nose and vote for it even if they disagreed or be labeled obstructionist.
You do understand that just because they eventually elect Jordan, which I assume will happen, it won’t mean that they’re going to vote in lockstep with him.
What you don’t seem to understand is that when Jordan becomes speaker, the things that get to the floor will be conservative, non-nevertrumper issues.
And they WILL vote for them. Because THAT will be the Republican agenda on offer..
Voting with the dems at that point will be political suicide.
What YOU don’t seem to understand, along with most of the rest of the commenters here, is UNLESS THEY CHANGE THE RULES and prove themselves the hypocrites they are, it will be just as easy to get rid of Jordan as it was McCarthy.
I agree. Letting a single member force a new vote in a closely divided chamber was ludicirous.
txvet2,
I agree with the facts in both of your posts here though I don’t see Jordan as a lock to be.selected as Speaker. I disagree on the analysis of of those facts. IMO the GoP HoR caucus is in a transitional period that began a decade or so ago with the rise of the Tea Party. A growing number of members with a more populist outlook if not truly populists have been elected. The gerrymandering and creation/maintenance of minority majority CD has added to the polarization in the electorate.
Add the ongoing ‘great sorting’ as folks move to areas that more closely align with their political philosophy. All these things have led us to where we are now. We have an old guard of establishment GoP members on the grift from various lobbyists who have promised for years that ‘change’ was just around the corner.
Somehow that promised ‘change’; close the border, work towards a balanced budget, reform Social Security/Medicare, de-claw the Federal bureaucracy, rollback over regulation via Congressional Review Act and many other promised legislative items never dem to get over the hump.
McCarthy made two basic promises to get the votes to become Speaker. First follow regular order for the appropriations process. Secondly refuse to rely upon d/prog votes to pass legislation. Very basic and in concert they work to ensure that no budget passes out of the HoR that 218 GoP members don’t approve of.
That’s what the real issue is. The old guard establishment members like being able to blame the d/prog or the WH or the Senate about why they can’t fulfill their campaign promises. They want to continue avoiding tough up/down votes in the HoR so they can mask their opposition to the very things they ran on.
For the moment the old guard establishment power is waning while the populist members power is waxing. The establishment members are flipping PO and desperate b/c they know if they have to make simple up/down votes on things as basic as appropriations without being able to obscure the issue by blaming negotiations with d/prog or the WH or Senate they will have to choose in public whether to do what they told their constituents or do what they told the lobbyists.
Anyway that’s my simplistic analysis FWIW.
Chief: I didn’t intentionally do any analysis. The facts speak for themselves, although it appears that there are a few here who think that they can ignore them and wish things to happen. The KEY fact is that it only takes one member to move to vacate the chair and 5 to make it happen. That means (analysis:) that Jordan can’t enforce his will on the caucus,and if he and his adherents push too hard, it WILL happen. Maybe it wouldn’t have before, but now they have a precedent and motivation. You can characterize it any way you want to, as some have above, but that doesn’t change the FACT that he has no more power than McCarthy did, and is on just as thin ice. One more thing: It’s looks like there is more than a perfunctory protest vote going on. IF Jordan is going to win, he’s going to have to do some negotiating of his own. We’ll see how that turns out, but given that all of the conservatives are already on his side, the only direction he can move is wrong.
BTW, as I mentioned above, rumor (from people on the floor) has it that Jordan is losing some votes, apparently because some reps are getting upset about the strongarm tactics of Jordan’s supporters. Don’t know how true it is, but the fact that there won’t be another vote tonight argues that they’re a long way from agreement.
We seem to disagree on the importance of the motion to vacate being an option to hold the Speaker accountable. We also seem to diverge about the role of the Speaker and whether they should follow the Pelosi ‘imperial speakership’ example.
I don’t believe the Speaker should hold unchecked power to force members to do jack squat. That’s how the establishment goons ran roughshod over more conservative to populist members for session after session. Should the Speaker have power to get things done using a carrot and stick approach? Sure, but not unchecked power and the tool of a motion to vacate process is that check.
IMO this entire situation is a result of a clash between waning and waxing factions in the GoP caucus. It could have been avoided by passing out the appropriations in regular order without worrying about d/prog or the Senate, the WH or the legacy media reaction. Let them explain why they think their ideas are better and get enough votes in the HoR to agree if they can. Then let the votes be counted and let the constituents see exactly which members chose to break ranks and support the d/prog policy priorities.
The basic issue here is that the establishment members want some cover to hide their votes behind just like they have in the past. Regular order and up/down votes v an omnibus stuffed full of who knows what precludes that safety net/fig leaf to hide.
I don’t think we disagree much at all. We just are expressing things differently. It’s worth remembering that McCarthy was ousted by a total of 10 members of a 221 member caucus, not a majority or anything like it. It’s all well and good to want them to pass legislation in regular order. It’s another kettle of fish to get the membership to go along. I gotta go. Maybe we’ll get back into this later.
Chief: Remember me asking you a few days ago what you thought would happen if a bloc of Republicans refused to support Jordan?
I came of age after the Goldwater years, and never observed the R “circular firing squad.” All I did was read about it. Well, it would seem that the clock has turned back by 59 years, hasn’t it? Oh boy.
The GOP is a complete mess and a circus. I disgusted by their behavior and they (are you listening Ronna) will never get another dime from me. I despise them.
I gave money to two local R candidates, but never joined them. They wanted me to, and I was tempted because the Rs around here are Eisenhower types. But I told them once bitten (by the Ds), twice shy. The failure to approve a speaker is driving me away. Not back to the Ds, that’s for sure, but away from the crazies who have too much leverage, just like the crazies who have way too much leverage in the D Party that I once called home.
A basic requirement is sanity and maturity, and I am not seeing it at the national level in either party. Forget about the parties themselves for a second: This is bad for the country. Does anyone care about what’s best for the country? Stomping off because Jordan (or Scalise before him) isn’t conservative enough is the epitome of idiocy. Oh wait. The Ds are worse, but it’s only a matter of degree.
Well, Trump endorsed Ronna to lead the national GOP.
Well, that’s it. No more votes today. Looks like they haven’t found a way to break the logjam.
Well, maybe all the attacks and name-calling weren’t the best way to get people to vote your way?