Tracking the Election for House Speaker Mk2 – Round 1

It’s times like this when I really miss Louis Gohmert (R: Idiocracy) in the House. That he’s no longer in politics because of his own doltish decisions is a blessing to the nation but had he not been such a twit, he would’ve added measurably to the clown confederacy that is the Republican conference in the House. He could’ve been relied upon to throw his hat in the ring too as he did when Paul Ryan stood for Speaker. I believe he got one vote – probably his own.

Michele Bachmann and Steve King are two others who have departed the circus for parts that are not so much “unknown” as “no one cares where they are now”. But they have worthy replacements in Greene, Boebert, Harriet Hageman and Nancy Mace who form a bumbling clown chorus around George Santos who isn’t so much a replacement as an imposter with several stolen identities.

Then there are those who never left like Chief Bloviator Jimmy Gym Jordan and the other Jim, an up-and-Comer who’s certain he can make believe there’s evidence of something if he says it often enough.

The GOP would be hard-pressed to find a more likely klustervuck of buffoons if they’d advertised for them. And what a show they are putting on. It’s totally ad-lib, not because they don’t know the script but because they’re all working different storylines with different goals and diverse ideas of the ways to get there. Most of the latter are unworkable because they lack unity. It’s sheer improvisation, relying on the superficial abilities of the actors to play their parts with gusto. And gusto, in this instance, is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in place of intelligent thought, planning and organisation.

Of all their current dilemmas, the one taking centre stage is their lack of a leader. It’s a predicament of their own making. A small contingent pressured McCarthy to rearrange the rules so it was easy to get rid of a sitting speaker while almost impossible to replace them. So here we are, one speaker short of a functioning US House.

Kevin assured the media he was safe on a Monday and was ousted on a Tuesday. A week later on Wednesday, Scalise won the position of GOP nominee, dropped out of the race on Thursday and Jordan was catapulted to nominee status on Friday. To gauge Jordan’s support in the GOP conference (because apparently everyone but the House GOP knew Jordan was tolerated but not popular in his own party) they held a third vote.

These are the results.

Note the difference between the total number of GOP members and the total votes tallied for each ballot. Who were the non-voters, were they absent and, if so, what were they doing that was more important than participating in the hunt for a Congressional leader?

It doesn’t really give Jordan much of an idea of who the hold-outs are when 55 voted for “Anyone But Jordan” and 14 didn’t vote at all.

So on to Tuesday, October 17. Congress has been without a Speaker for two weeks and the GOP are only just getting around to holding the first floor vote. This is how it went.

Of the 20 members who voted against Jordan, 5 preferred someone from their state. On the flip side, no Louisianans voted for Scalise (they all went for Jordan) and only one Californian stuck with McCarthy.

There are 18 Biden crossover districts (those districts won by Biden but represented by a Republican in the US House) and there was some concern among Gym strap supporters that these members might shy away from the human bullhorn for fear of voter backlash in 2024. However, only 5 anti-Gymites live in crossover districts.

Here’s the list:

If you’re wondering how Gym sock’s first-round figures compared to Kevi’s, we have that for you too:

Stay tuned, Zoomers, for more action tomorrow!

Pictured in the featured image:
Left: Hakeem Jeffries
Crentre from top: Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, Kevin McCarthy
Right from top: Tom Emmer, Mike Garcia, Tom Massie, Lee Zeldin, Tom Cole