Another day, another clusterf***k in the U.S. House of Representatives. After days of behind-the-scenes haggling (and reports of strong-arming) Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said he was ready to call a vote that would make him the new speaker of the House. Word on Tuesday morning was that his team believed they had commitments for the necessary votes and the worst-case scenario would be GOP defections in the single digits, which were rationalized as protest votes that would fall away on a second ballot. As it turned out, Jordan lost 20 votes among his fellow Republicans. After originally calling for another vote on Tuesday evening, he scuppered the whole thing until Wednesday morning.
By the time you read this, that vote could have taken place already — or perhaps Jordan has seen the writing on the wall and dropped out. Reports suggest there are now serious discussions of electing Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who is virtually powerless, as a real-but-temporary speaker with full powers to get the House through the appropriations process. Nobody seems to know exactly how that would work, since the House has to have a speaker before it can vote on anything else (such as changing the rules about the speakership). Some congressmen are now calling for defrocked former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to be reinstated, which would mike the perfect coda to this absurd brouhaha.
