Steve Scalise drops out of speaker's race as House GOP faces leadership crisis
Rep. Steve Scalise is dropping out of the speaker’s race after House Republicans failed to coalesce behind him in the aftermath of Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster.
House Republicans met behind closed-doors for more than two hours Thursday afternoon, where the Majority leader urged his detractors to explain their opposition to him in front of the conference. After the meeting ended, Scalise huddled with those opposed to him in his office. And Republicans scheduled a second members-only conference meeting for Thursday evening.
But the opposition to Scalise as the next speaker only grew Thursday, with roughly 20 Republicans publicly opposing him. Scalise needs a majority of the House to be elected speaker, meaning he can only afford to lose four votes.
Democrats should start quietly approaching moderate Republicans and go:
"Look... Vote for Jeffries. Yeah, yeah, you'll lose your next election, but that's just tearing the band-aid off.
"You know your caucus is a shit show, we know it's a shit show, everyone knows it's a shit show, and the majority of your voters have lost their minds. You're trying to hold a coalition of sane and insane Republicans together, and that's a political dead-end anyway.
"So go out with a bang, by doing the right thing and saving our country. We got so much bad shit going on in the world right now, we need a functional House. End your political career on an act you can be proud of."
Any republican willing to do that voted to impeach after j6 and got primaried. They have been evaporatively cooled past the line for anyone to engage in career sacrifice.
What I'm naively optimistic for is a center Republican to come forward with a deal with center house Dems and a few center Reps and create a coalition governments.
Basically trade a few committee seats and offer a floor vote on a couple Dem bills.
They don't even have to guarantee passage. And everyone can win the messaging when the bills don't pass. GOP can say they are "fighting DEM spending and waste" DEM can say "they are trying to make your life better but those dirty GOP are ruining it"
Word leaked that the dems had 1 yea vote from the GOP. That could just be a savvy operative acting as a chaos agent, but it could be that has already started to happen.
I would expect best case they would gavel him in only to "get shit done" with Israel to take the pressure off, but it's possible.
They shouldn't use Jefferies. They should put up a Democrat like Angie Craig (D, MN), Don Davis (D, NC) or Bishop Sanford (D, GA) a significantly more "blue dog style" Democrat that a R who votes for can go back to their state and justify woth something like, "There are Republicans who are just there to muck things up. I had a choice between a moderate Democrat who could free us up to assist Israel and Ukraine now or a Republican who would take months to confirm if ever!" You can defend that politically, especially in a farm state like Nebraska or Kansas where that type of pragmatism is still culturally values.
Not a bad idea. It also shows a willingness to compromise and work across the aisle from Democrats, which is a striking difference from the Republican mess. I don't expect Republicans to take it, but it's important to show people that Democrats want to act in good faith here.