On the Role of Hardliners in Reply to McCarthy’s Discarding the Supermajority in the 118th Legislator

McCarthy will have little option than to lose four votes for speaker in the 118th Congress. The hardliners had the chance to hold McCarthy hostage in the race for speaker and that will mean that the House can be shut down over just a few votes. This is a concern for everyone. The White House should worry about the government spending battles and the debt ceiling.

“I’ve heard from multiple of my constituents who question the wisdom of proceeding forward with that leadership,” Biggs said, adding that there needs to be a “frank conversation” about who they elect for the top job.

In the Freedom Caucus, there’s no one who agrees about whether or not to make that a hard line.

The “only Kevin” Campaign for the House of Representatives: Rep. Matt Gaetz’s Response to the Former President’s Embarrassment

McCarthy might not have anything to offer to win the votes of the democrats. They dislike big committee posts, and don’t like to pass signature bills. They don’t care that a majority of the GOP in the House wants McCarthy. For them, as it was for Trump, the chaos is the point. Taking on the swamp gets them booked on conservative talk shows, increases their donations and polishes their MAGA credentials.

McCarthy’s supporters have been pushing the “only Kevin” strategy, which is contrary to the discussions about trying to rally around a consensus candidate. McCarthy may not be able to convince the holdout’s to back him, meaning the process may take hours or even days.

CNN has not projected which party will have total control of the House of Representatives, but as of Friday morning it projected that the Republicans would have a total of 211 seats.

The group wants to make a long list of rules changes. McCarthy doesn’t seem to plan to delay next week’s internal leadership elections.

The taxpayers that voted in the representatives deserved credit, Norman said when asked if McCarthy should get credit for delivering the majority.

In response to the former President’s endorsement, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said that Trump’s own rhetoric was a joke. It was sad. Gaetz spoke. “This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote.”

Gaetz said the C team should be starting with a slim majority. “We need to put our star players in a position to shine brightest so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.”

Speaker and Deputy Speaker: The First Day of the House Majority Whip Conference in Minnesota, with Rep. Tom Emmer, Mark Bishop, and Rep. Jim Banks

On the first day of the new Congress, the fight over the speakership threw the GOP majority into disarray and jeopardized their agenda.

On the Democratic side, Nancy Pelosi, the current House speaker, has not yet made clear what her next move will be. There has been a lot of speculation in Washington about her political future and whether she will run again for the top leadership spot for House Democrats or if she will step aside as a new generation of potential leaders waits in the wings.

The schedule shows that the Republicans are going to hold a candidate forum on Monday evening followed by leadership elections on Tuesday, November 15.

To be elected speaker, you need at least 218 votes. The tally for the first ballot in the speaker vote was 203 for McCarthy, 10 for Rep. Andy Biggs and six for Jordan – with three Republicans voting for other candidates.

The elections for House Democratic leadership will take place on November 30. The voting will take place in a closed room using an app.

A majority of those present and voting is what a candidate needs to win a position in Democratic leadership. If more than two candidates run and no one wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes after the first round of voting will be eliminated and voting will proceed to a second round. A process continues until there is a majority.

Indeed, the small group of Republicans known as the “Never Kevin” movement – confident that Biggs could not win a majority of the House – has been trying to recruit a viable alternative, and claim “several” Republicans have privately told them they would be interested in running if McCarthy drops out. They want to show McCarthy that he is weak on the first ballot and encourage other candidates to jump in.

A group of Republicans decamped to the office of Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, the new House majority whip. Bishop was encouraged by the talks and claimed that things had changed over the last few hours.

Emmer told reporters Tuesday he still plans to run and that he doesn’t know if a smaller majority impacts his bid. His pitch to members was the same as McCarthy’s.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, a Trump ally and the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, also officially declared his candidacy for the whip’s position. The current deputy whip, Drew Ferguson of Georgia, wants to be the whip because he believes that his experience on the whip’s team will make him more valuable in a slimmed down majority.

It is indeed a course of action. The California Democrat told Bash that people are campaigning and that it is a beautiful thing. “And I’m not asking anyone for anything. Members of my congregation are asking me to do that. But, again, let’s just get through the election.”

The No. 2 House Democrat Candidate: Rep. Joe Neguse, Rep. Steny Hoyer, and Rep. J. Clyburn

Currently, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer serves as the No. 2 House Democrat, in the role of House majority leader, and South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn serves in the role of House majority whip. The assistant Speaker is from Massachusetts and the caucus chair is from New York.

Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, who currently serves as the co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has announced his run for caucus chair to replace Jeffries who is term limited.

The race to lead the party’s campaign arm is starting to take shape after the current chair lost his reelection.

Democrats including Ami Bera of California and Sara Jacobs of California are being floated as possible successors to Tony Chavez who announced his candidacy for the position on Friday.

Kevin McCarthy spoke to reporters late Tuesday evening in the Capitol. He said he was staying until his team won.

After a conversation with Mr. McCarthy on Tuesday night, Mr. Trump said it was time to vote for Kevin. He told Republicans to avoid an embarrassing defeat.

“If at some point, if Kevin did take his name out, then you would have good people (running). One GOP lawmaker said that he would be the guy.

If McCarthy isn’t able to get votes in the GOP primary, he would be free to jump into the race, but he wouldn’t say if he would.

“No, I’m not going to get into speculation,” Scalise told CNN. Our focus is to resolve it by January 3. And there’s a lot of conversations that everybody has been having, Kevin, surely, with the members who have expressed concerns.”

Jordan’s fight against McCarthy: A battle of the hardliners for the House and the legacy of Jim Cannon in February 1917, the day after McCarthy resigned as speaker

Jim Jordan of Ohio was nominated to be speaker of the house by conservatives during the second and third votes of the chamber, as a fight raged for House leadership.

After exiting a meeting with Andy McCarthy, a South Carolina Republican, he said he was going to vote for him for speaker. He later added: “All this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. And you’ll see more of it.”

In addition to those five, a new group of seven Republican hardliners on Thursday laid out a list of conditions to earn their vote, although they did not specifically threaten to vote against McCarthy if their demands aren’t met.

The House’s leader has made several public promises about how he will rule over the House, such as threatening tolaunch an impeachment inquiry into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and not taking up bills from any Republican senators who voted for the spending package.

McCarthy has concessions to make to the GOP dissidents and could cut his tenure as speaker short. Among the rules changes: McCarthy agreed to restore a rule allowing a single Republican member to call for a vote to depose him as speaker, the same rule that led to John Boehner’s decision to resign as speaker in 2015.

In 1910, Republican Speaker Joe Cannon of Illinois was removed from office by a motion to vacate the chair. Cannon had and abused absolute power over committee chairs and assignments, floor procedure and rules for debate. No one has had this level of authority before.

The impact of a January red wave was based on the idea that people were sick of the fighting and were looking for something else. “And I know I get that wherever I go in my district is, ‘why can’t you guys just get things done?’”

“My vote yesterday was basically to break a deadlock, because we were deadlocked, and we were not getting anywhere,” Donalds, a Florida Republican, said Wednesday on “CNN This Morning.” “Right now, (McCarthy) doesn’t have a pathway to get there. If it does come back, yes. I can attend but Republicans need to come together and figure out a way to get a speaker.

As the fight has stretched out, the situation has grown increasingly dire for McCarthy’s political future as even some of his Republican allies have begun to fear that the House GOP leader may not be able to pull off his gamble for speaker if the fight goes much longer.

Hakeem Jeffries: a New Republican Speaker for the House of Representatives, or Where will we go in January 3? Commentary of the New York Rep. Joyce

Some Democrats have indicated they would be interested, including a moderate Democrat who told CNN some of his GOP colleagues have approached him about it.

Joyce also said some members have reached out to him about potentially running, but he dismissed it. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker.”

“Hakeem, Hakeem,” Democrats chanted as their new leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, earned more votes than McCarthy in the first three roll calls of the new House the GOP is supposed to control – although he too fell short of the 218 majority.

“Democrats are in the process of organizing the Democratic Conference,” Jeffries told CNN on Thursday. Republicans are working to organize the Republican Conference. We should know what happens on January 3.

Some of the potential consensus picks that have been floated included retiring Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York, who both voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus; and Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran lawmaker and incoming head of the House Rules Committee.

But that would require agreement from every single Democrat and the help of five Republicans – no easy feat. Upton said he has no plans to be in Washington that day, telling CNN: “I’ll be skiing.”

But Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman said this has happened before – nearly a decade ago in his state where minority Democrats in the Arkansas legislature joined forces with a handful of Republicans to elect a GOP speaker of their choice. Westerman made this case to his colleagues in a private meeting.

The Challenge of Replacing the Speaker: Insights from a Republican Democrat Candidate Whose Campaigning is on the Way to Get Here

January 3 is when we are supposed to get here, and I am worried that we wont be able to form a congress and organize committees, and push policy objectives.

Westerman added that the discussion over changing House rules is good for the party. He said he wasn’t excited about any destructive movement.

If Mr. McCarthy has a plan he has cut his team of people out of his deliberations about the speakership race in order to make them feel paranoid. Instead, he was spotted together with Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist and close friend of his, in recent days.

It was not clear whether Mr. McCarthy enlisted Mr. Trump to help his campaign, or if Mr. Trump was simply working on his own. The former president has spoken with Eli Crane, an incoming Republican congressman from Arizona, and Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, among others. A group of seven current and incoming Republican lawmakers signed a letter with a list of concessions they want their leaders to make in the next congress, one of them being the ability to remove the speaker.

When Nancy Pelosi was short of the votes she would need to become the speaker, she quietly picked off defectors so she could get the votes she needed. She won seven votes for agreeing to limit her tenure, picked up eight others by promising to implement rules for fostering more bipartisan legislating, and won over her lone challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship.

The California Republican has already made a series of pledges in an effort to appease the right flank of his party. He traveled to the southern border and called on Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to resign or face potential impeachment proceedings. He promised Ms. Greene a seat on the Oversight Committee after stripping her of her committee assignments for making a series of violent and conspiratorial social media posts.

The House select committee is looking at the attack at the Capitol and he has vowed to hold hearings about it. He has been meeting with conservative lawmakers in an effort to win them over. On Monday night, he publicly urged his members to vote against the spending bill.

The fight for a new speaker in the wake of the Capitol insurrection: What is the fate of the speaker? An analysis by Lorentzian Senator Patrick McCarthy

Any party in American history would have to contend with a fragile governing mandate if the GOP takes over the House in January. And the ideological struggle being waged by pro-Donald Trump extremists inside the party would have made even a more comfortable majority volatile.

The congressman wanted to be speaker for a long time. He seemed willing to do a lot of things to get the job, including burrowing into former President Trump’s good graces.

The steps McCarthy is taking to try to secure the speakership – and the future complications that may entail – were evident on Tuesday when he gave Greene, the Georgia Republican, a pass for her latest effort to mock the trauma of the Capitol insurrection. The congresswoman had said over the weekend that had she been in charge on January 6, 2021, the riot would have succeeded and the mob would have been armed. The White House complained that she was being sarcastic and it was against fundamental US values.

The House will continue to be paralyzed until this standoff is resolved. The fight for speaker may not be over by the time McCarthy gets a chance to make his case.

This is one reason why the current year-end tussle over whether to fund the government for a full year – a bipartisan framework agreement for which was announced Tuesday night – or for just a few months is so critical since it could dump a fiscal crisis on the lap of a weak and easily manipulated new speaker next month.

Sen. Ted Cruz Rejoinds Trump on the Future of the House-Burgeoning Funding and Expenditure Campaigns

McCarthy replied that she thought she was being facetious when she said she was being inflammatory. His attitude was not a surprise; it was consistent with his attempts to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, for which he briefly said Trump bore responsibility.

The same dynamic was at play when McCarthy declined to directly criticize the ex-president for meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes at a dinner also featuring Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who has recently made a string of antisemitic remarks. In a histrionic performance at the White House after meeting Biden and other congressional leaders last month, the House Republican leader falsely claimed that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, when he hadn’t done so once.

Roy and 12 other Republicans sent a letter to GOP senators on Monday saying that if the government funding bill passes, they would oppose and whip against “any legislative priority of those senators who vote for this bill.” McCarthy tweeted in response to their letter saying “Agreed. Except no need to whip – when I’m Speaker, their bills will be dead on arrival in the House if this nearly $2T monstrosity is allowed to move forward over our objections and the will of the American people.”

The split not only augurs likely future tensions between Republicans in the House and McConnell, it raises the possibility that it will become politically more difficult for some Republican senators to vote for a spending deal now – especially as conservative media has taken up McCarthy’s line.

“This is a lot of unfinished business this year that they would have to take care of next year and I know from having been over there, that wouldn’t be easy, especially when you’ have a narrow majority.”

“We’re enduring the silly season of a campaign. That is over for most of us once you get elected. He said the silliness is still evident because he is running for Speaker of the House.

Indeed, all other potential first-time House speakers in the last 90 years had at least 230 seats in their majority. The power of incumbency in speakers whose party held fewer seats than that was theirs.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Case of Mitch McCarthy During the February 8, 2020 GOP Conference in New York City

His net favorability rating was +30 points among Republicans. That’s certainly not bad. (Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has notoriously low ratings among Republicans.) The Net Favorability rating of +30 points is not very good.

Ironically, McCarthy may have only himself to blame. He linked his party’s elections to Trump’s reputation after embracing him after initially condemning him over the January 6, 2020, insurrection. But many voters were alienated by the ex-president’s election denialism and landed McCarthy with a much smaller and more unworkable House majority than he expected.

Either way, all of this GOP angst is a pretty decent consolation prize for Democrats after losing the House majority. They are watching the Republican Party that cannot seem to stay together after a bad day for an opposition party.

It was not clear how long it would take for the Republicans to resolve their stalemate, or if Mr. McCarthy had a plan for coming back from an embarrassment. His supporters said he was willing to drag out the process for a while, so he could focus on his political career, which was in serious danger after he failed in trying to get the speakership.

But now with just one day to go, a group of at least nine Republicans have made clear that they’re still not sold – despite McCarthy’s warning and even after he gave in to some of their most ardent demands, which he outlined during a Sunday evening conference call.

McCarthy was involved in discussions with hardliners late Thursday that indicated an desire to secure the glory of the speaker’s gavel. But given the extreme forces rocking the GOP and the intransigence of the Gaetz-Boebert chaos caucus, it seemed unlikely he could create a political foundation that would promote any kind of stable governance.

McCarthy worked the phones with critics and supporters of the rules changes in order to win over holdouts during the week after Christmas.

We are ready for a fight. Not the way we want to start out in our new majority, but you can’t really negotiate against the position of ‘give us everything we ask for and we won’t guarantee anything in return,’” Kelly Armstrong is from North Dakota and a member of the Republican Governance Group.

“I give Kevin a ton of credit. He’s worked really hard to find a way around the situation. A way to make this place run better. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”

The Committee Chairs of the South Carolina House Minority Caucus: Why he’s still not going to win the House Speaker’s seat

He can only afford to lose four votes on the House floor, and so far, at least five Republicans have vowed to oppose him, with nearly a dozen other GOP lawmakers publicly saying they’re still not there yet.

When the House gaveled back into session, Republicans moved to adjourn for the night rather than take another failed speaker vote. GOP leaders were hopeful that the ongoing talks would convince McCarthy’s opponents to vote for adjournment, but with just four votes to spare, the roll-call vote was tight.

McCarthy released the final rules package later that evening and also put out a “Dear Colleague” letter making one last pitch for the job, which included additional promises about how he’d govern as speaker – including ensuring that the GOP’s ideological groups are better represented on committees.

Moderates said on the Sunday call they would only swallow the concession if McCarthy votes for it. They are worried some hardliners are not negotiating in good faith and fear they won’t be able to come through in the end.

After Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed the rules, a group is still pushing for a single member to be able to call for a vote to oust the speaker, but they also want a commitment that leadership won’t play in primaries.

The letter, obtained by CNN, says there are no means to measure whether the promises are kept or broken.

McCarthy decided to put off the committee chairs races until after the speaker vote. He said it was for freshman members to have input but other members think it was a way to insulate him from any criticism he might get from other members who lose their races.

An aide to Norman said that the South Carolina district offices have been receiving many calls from people who have received calls from someone warning them of the consequences if McCarthy isn’t elected speaker. The aide of Norman told CNN that the campaigns had not done anything to change the congressman’s position.

During the holidays, McCarthy’s defenders promised him that they wouldn’t allow a handful of members to control their conference.

McCarthy’s opposition, however, has also been working in tandem – and they are far more practiced in playing hardball, though the Freedom Caucus has been openly divided over McCarthy.

Reply to McCarthy’s Letter to the Speaker: The Chicken Game in the House and the Times Call for a Breakdown of the Status Quo

The committee in charge of administrative matters sent a letter last week detailing the practical implications of a drawn-out speaker’s fight. The memo says that committees will not be able to pay staff if the House Rules package is not approved.

If a rules package isn’t adopted by early January, student loan payments won’t be disbursed for committee staff.

It can be used to paralyze the House and the Republican majority in the first few days of their term so as to make them unable to operate efficiently, with some of the harshest penalties fall on rank-and-file staffers.

Even with the race far from settled, boxes from McCarthy’s office were spotted by CNN being moved into the speaker’s suite last week – a standard protocol, but a sign he’s committed to seeking the job.

The ongoing standoff between a pro- McCarthy group and a pro-McCarthy group is reminiscent of a chicken game where both sides have ripped out the steering wheel from the dashboard and were just going to pedal to the metal, one member said.

When nothing changes, Pennsylvania GOP congressman Scott Perry says on his official account. He cited the letter which says that the times call for a radical departure from the status quo.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the rabble-rouser turned McCarthy ally, and the chaos caucus that has ruled for two years

How does this end? House precedent instructs members to take successive votes until the majority is secured. Until a speaker is chosen, the House is essentially a useless entity. It cannot make laws or swear in its members.

On the second ballot, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – the Republican rabble-rouser turned McCarthy ally – rose to nominate McCarthy, after he had received six votes from the holdouts. Gaetz followed Jordan and nominated the Ohio Republican as a candidate. All 19 Republicans holdouts consolidated around Jordan, and the count ended in the same place as the first ballot.

Jordan is a close ally of former President Donald Trump. Jordan supported lawsuits to void the election results after Biden was elected President and after Trump refused to concede, even though he had won the election.

McCarthy got weaker with each roll call, even if one senior GOP source told CNN he would never back down and that we were going to war. Some GOP members are now referring to the rebels as “the chaos caucus” or “The Taliban 20,” CNN’s Manu Raju reported.

But when a red wave never materialized in the November midterms, the razor-thin majority that resulted for Republicans empowered a small band of conservatives – long distrustful of McCarthy – to make demands.

Republicans have regained power two years after former President Donald Trump walked out of Washington in disgrace.

Democrats were joyful at the GOP circus that they beheld, while Republicans were fighting and opening the congress with no majority.

The chamber was brought to a standstill at the start of the Republicans’ rule because lawmakers refused to vote against Mr. McCarthy.

McCarthy told reporters late Tuesday that he did not think it would be productive to keep going on the day. But he insisted he wouldn’t be dropping out of the race.

He implied that he could get a number of members to vote for him, which would lower the threshold that he would need to win.

Dem Demographics: Democratic Sensitivities to the 2016 Benghazi Attack in Libya During the Second Session of the U.S. Senate Majority

While Trump’s standing appears to have weakened (there is, of course, still plenty of time for him to turn things around), he has already changed the landscape of American politics. Trump has sped up the radicalization of the GOP by some members who are hellbent on playing by their own rules and getting concessions even if it harms the party and the government.

“Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House isn’t someone who has sold shares of themself for more than a decade to get it,” Matt Gaetz, the hard-right Florida congressman, said on the House floor before nominating Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for speaker before a second round of voting Tuesday.

Former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state – who voted to impeach Trump, lost a primary to a rival backed by the ex-president, who then went on to lose the general election to a Democrat – told CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday the rebels were in it for themselves.

That narrow margin is the direct result of the voters being alienated by the ex-president’s false claims about voter fraud, and that will also endanger the majority on must-pass legislation like raising the debt ceiling later on.

Republican congressman Blake Moore told CNN that a few people in the conference can stop them from implementing their agenda.

The Tea Party wave enabled the Republicans to take over the House, but the cost was steep. For many years, the U.S. credit had been protected and Speaker John Boehner was frustrated because he could not get anything done while he was there.

” Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable?” McCarthy said something on Fox News. We created a select committee and a special committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are not where they should be.

The ostensible reason for the GOP-led Benghazi investigation was to find out what happened in an attack on an American embassy in Libya, where four people died – not to hurt Clinton. But Clinton, who was secretary of state in the Obama administration, was the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

The Case of McCarthy’s Behaviour in the House of Dems in disarray: An Example Against a Four-Seat Majority

McCarthy posed for a picture with Trump at his Florida home just weeks after the insurrection, because he didn’t believe he could stick to his criticism after January 6.

As for Trump, his very influence could end up playing a role in his defeat. Not only is he now unable to sway votes on Capitol Hill, he is likely to confront a number of politicians, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who are capable of presenting a fresher and more polished version of Trumpism without the baggage that comes with Trump. If the GOP is full of people like Trump who follow his path, voters might be more willing to cast a ballot for someone else than for Donald Trump.

At the 11th hour, he tried to play tough guy, threatening the defectors with stripping them of committee assignments. That seems to have changed what his allies were intending.

There’s some question how hard Trump actually tried. On the day of the vote, and in the days leading up to it, for example, he hasn’t posted anything on his social media platform to boost McCarthy.

McCarthy had resisted this as it would essentially put his job on the line on a daily, even hourly, basis. He was reported to have given in to the temptation to vote against him on this issue in his last rounds of trying to get votes.

At the end of the day, the job of speaker isn’t supposed to be about one person’s ambition but what they can get done to fix problems in the country, and this is taking place at a time when people are already cynical about the intentions of politicians in Washington and what they are trying to accomplish.

For all the talk in Washington of “Dems in disarray,” this is again another example of the chaos that continues to surround House Republicans. With a four-seat majority, how will they govern if they’re not able to pick a leader?

The Case for Replacing McCarthy in 2020 During the Truth Social Adjournment Reheating: The Case of Mr. McCarthy, the Democratic Candidate, and the President

The reason: Voting to adjourn would require 218 votes, and Democratic sources say they would actively whip against a motion to adjourn. Plus some Republicans would likely vote against it as well.

McCarthy and his allies were talking to the holdouts in the “never Kevin” camp, who were moving closer to a deal.

In 2023, Mr. McCarthy’s willingness to stand on the floor for failed vote after failed vote after failed vote after failed vote has a bizarre quality as an event on TV and Twitter. Nothing meaningful changed across three days (and counting). But the impasse and repetition is mesmerizing, operating in a space between institutional concern, dark comedy and some deep human element, since the dynamics of this willingness to lose are so unusual. “We are gonna go in here and have votes and nothing is going to change,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters on Thursday morning. We are making progress with each other.

Even though McCarthy’s allies tried to get Trump to do so, the formerpresident chose not to issue a statement reiterating his support for the speaker.

Another member warned that after Tuesday, it’s clear that the opposition to McCarthy is personal – meaning there may be little that he can do to turn the tide at this point.

McCarthy’s speaker bid appeared to be in serious trouble, as the vote count against him grew.

“This changes neither my view of McCarthy nor Trump nor my vote,” Gaetz said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, shortly after Trump came to McCarthy’s defense in the Truth Social post.

After more than 10 votes, the Republican obstructionists still didn’t budge. And while Gaetz cast a vote for Trump in the seventh and eighth round (and nominated him on the 11th), the prolonged deadlock was yet another sign that the former president’s power has diminished at a time when the 2024 presidential campaign is expected to ramp up.

Nathaniel P. Banks: Speaker of the 1854 New York/Mexico Conference, Opening the Doors for a Second Legislator

One lawmaker who spoke with Trump late Tuesday suggested the former president should run for speaker himself, according to a person briefed on the call. Trump demurred and continued to push this person to support McCarthy, claiming that he would be a solid “America First” supporter.

Editor’s Note: Thomas Balcerski is the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. History at Occidental College and a Long-term Fellow at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. He is the author of “Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King” (Oxford University Press). He tweets about presidential history @tbalcerski. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

The Banks contest stands out for its length and backdrop of “Bleeding Kansas,” but three other speakership contests required more than a dozen rounds of voting to reach resolution in the 19th century. Each of them was also roiled by the issue of slavery.

In either instance, a compromise of some sort – whether by choosing a new candidate for speaker or by placating the splinter faction in some significant way – has usually been the result. If history is any guide, we may once again be living a version of one of these two scenarios.

The speaker race in 1854 faced its most serious challenge yet. Without sufficient Democrats or former Whigs to reach a majority, a compromise candidate was found in Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts, a member of the nativist American Party (also called “Know Nothings”). After 133 ballots were cast, Banks became speaker and defeated his Democratic opponent, who wanted a plurality resolution to be passed in order to get the votes of competing groups. Banking defeated Aiken on February 2, 1856.

After deadlocking for eight ballots, an emergency meeting was held between the Republican majority leader Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, and the radical faction, represented by Rep. John M. Nelson of Wisconsin, Rep. Fiorello LaGuardia of New York and Rep. Roy O. Woodruff of Michigan. As a result, the House agreed to a number of procedural reforms and Gillett became speaker.

On that first ballot, the Democratic nominee Finis J. Garrett of Tennessee got 195 votes and two other Republicans got a total of 23. But the key obstacle for Gillett was a bloc of his party members who called themselves “progressives,” the term used by Theodore Roosevelt in his third-party “Bull Moose” bid for president in 1912.

It was riveting to learn that McCarthy was not on the first ballot. The job that stood second in the line of succession, after the vice president, was left open. It left undone the swearing in of the new House. And it left hanging the direction of the newly elected House Republican majority in the 118th Congress.

While McCarthy’s opponents didn’t grow in ranks, he still lost a vote, and it was an Indiana Republican who voted present. Spartz told reporters her vote was intended to encourage the two sides to get back to the negotiating table.

The fourth-ballot vote signaled that Republicans were far from breaking the deadlock that has paralyzed the chamber, even after a direct appeal from former President Donald J. Trump, who had endorsed Mr. McCarthy but stayed silent on Tuesday throughout his humiliating series of defeats on the House floor.

McCarthy needed to get two more votes. McCarthy and his allies focused on Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana and freshman Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona either to support McCarthy or vote present, lowering the vote threshold to win a majority.

For half a century the pattern stayed the same. It was weakened in the 1990s, giving way to a speaker holding on to just enough votes to get through, often using some party members to change the number needed for a majority.

Even in 10 decades of profound change, there are parallels between the mess at the start of the 118th Congress and what transpired during the 68th Congress.

But in both cases, the results of the latest November elections had been somewhere between disappointing and devastating, leaving the party clinging to majority control. That created anxiety and aggravated long-festering internal disputes over rules and procedures, including the powers of individual committee chairs.

In neither case had the nominee himself been especially controversial. They rose through the ranks, survivors of earlier leadership upheavals that were compatible with the party’s broad rank and file.

But having reached the top of the leadership ladder, these men represented a party establishment regarded with hostility by a potent faction of the party. They became the embodiment of that faction’s grievances.

The First Day of Congress: 1923–The Time of Gillett’s First Majority: An Overview of the Social and Political Progress of the United States

Gillett was a 72-year-old Boston Brahmin with a Harvard law degree who was serving his 15th term in the House. After the Republicans took the majority in the House in 1918, he grasped the gavel.

After that, Gillett’s party rode to a huge majority on the same postwar wave that swept Warren G. Harding into the White House. The party of Lincoln was gaining ground in most of the country and beginning a decade of Washington domination in the White House and Congress alike.

The brief era of the Harding administration had an effect on the party’s progress. Major strikes by coal miners and railroad workers were part of the labor unrest during the postwar recession.

The House had also brought criticism on itself in 1921 and 1922 by refusing to accept the official U.S. Census of 1920. For the first time, more Americans are living in urban areas than in rural areas, as documented by the renewal of the decennial study.

The Republican Party lost 75 House seats and 6 senate seats in 1922, due to the scandals and the typical swing of the political mood. It was a worse shellacking than Barack Obama or any other president of the past four decades would experience in his first midterm.

The 68th Congress was officially in office as of March 1923, but under the congressional schedule still in use at that time, it did not convene its first session until late that fall. Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president after his predecessor, Paul McGovern, died in August. The speaker vote began on December 5. The 20th Amendment was adopted in 1933 and adopted the current schedule with a January 3 starting date.

Gillett’s majority in 1923 was barely larger than Republicans have now, and he found it difficult to corral the factions within his party. McCarthy got a few more votes on the first ballot than he did, but he still didn’t reach the magic number.

17 progressive House members voted for Cooper in the first round of speaker votes. A former prosecuting attorney from Racine who represented southeastern Wisconsin from 1893 to 1919 and again from 1921 until his death in 1931. Cooper paid a price for opposing the U.S. entry into World War I.

Cooper, whose parents had operated a station on the Underground Railroad, was a long-standing ally of Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette. When Cooper was opposing Gillett in the House, LaFollette was conducting a smaller-scale revolt against the GOP leaders in the Senate.

Getting Gillett over the finish line took 9 votes, so some of Cooper’s supporters simply voted “present.” The speaker was reelected with just 215 votes. Only 414 people were present and voting for a name, so that was a majority.

Before the final vote, pandemonium erupted on the House floor after Gaetz waited until the very end of the 14th ballot to vote “present” when McCarthy needed one more “yes” vote. Stunned after believing he had the votes, McCarthy faced his most embarrassing defeat yet. McCarthy’s allies encircled Gaetz to try to find a way forward. McCarthy soon made a bee-line for discussion and started engaging Gaetz, too.

For some of McCarthy’s critics, a major motivation has been the decentralization of authority in the chamber. They don’t want to be dependent on the leader and they want more control over the chairs.

The rule change they wanted would allow the use of a motion to vacate the chair, which is a rather obscure House procedure. The provision allows a sufficient number of members to threaten to replace the speaker if a vote is not taken on the presiding officer.

Cannon chose all the members of the committees when he was at the height of his power. He also made himself chairman of the Rules Committee, determined which bills and amendments would be allowed on the floor and which members would be permitted to speak.

One inquiring constituent who asked a member for a copy of the House rules in that era was said to have received an envelope that contained only a picture of Joe Cannon.

The bipartisan majority needed to “vacate the chair” was put together by a coalition of Democratic and Republican members. Cannon remained Speaker but lost most of his powers.

The first official building housing the offices of House members was opened in 1908 and called the House Office Building. Later it was called the Old House Building. In 1962, it was named for Cannon. It stands as a monument both to the preeminence of the speakership and the impermanence of power.

Breakdown of the McCarthy Stalemate: What Happened to the Freedom Caucus after the Republican voted to oust Speaker Scott Perry

McCarthy agreed to allow more members of the Freedom Caucus to serve on the Rules Committee and to hold votes for bills that were priorities for the holdouts.

Even after making some concessions to his hardline opponents late Wednesday, it remains unclear if the California Republican will be able to get the 218 votes he needs to win the gavel.

McCarthy said that there has been progress but there is still no deal to end the stalemate. The House had left before McCarthy said it was probably best for people to work through some more.

In another sign of a breakthrough, a McCarthy-aligned super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, agreed to not get involved in open primaries in safe seats – one of the demands conservatives had asked for but McCarthy had resisted.

According to GOP sources familiar with internal discussions, one of the conservatives who voted against McCarthy told the leaders that he thinks he can get 10 holdouts to come along.

There are some people sitting down and discussing where they want to go with this, because there were a lot of people involved in this.

One moderate Republican told CNN Thursday morning that they aren’t happy about the concessions, though they are willing to have “discussions” about them.

Reducing the threshold for a vote to oust the speaker to one member will make governing on items such as the debt limit and funding almost impossible.

I am willing to listen to discussions even though I do not like the rules. I think it’s a mistake for the conference. A group of people want a weak speaker with a four vote majority. The public will not like what they see of the GOP, I fear,” the member said.

From left, Representatives Bob Good of Virginia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida applauded after Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania nominated Byron Donalds for speaker on Wednesday.

Reply to the Questions of Ms. Boebert and the Vote-Counting Legacy of a California Reply Advised by Mr. McCarthy

Mr. McCarthy’s monthslong effort to appease them — capped off by a frenzied few days of humiliating defeats on the House floor this week — has so far fallen flat, raising questions about his vote-counting abilities, and about whether they can ever be placated.

Some have strongly suggested that they can, and the California Republican has agreed to many of their demands, including moves that would weaken the speakership considerably and make it exceedingly difficult to pass the most basic legislation, including bills needed to keep the government open and to avoid a default on the nation’s debt.

Ms. Boebert has also repeatedly gone on television to defend the stance against Mr. McCarthy, even as pressure has mounted from Mr. Trump and conservative allies outside of Congress. And she scoffed on Thursday at the notion Mr. McCarthy’s many concessions would be sufficient to deliver him the votes to become speaker.

Representative Bob Good of Virginia, a self-described “biblical conservative” and former administrator at Liberty University, also made it clear on Thursday that he would never be swayed to Mr. McCarthy’s side.

The rule allows one lawmaker to force a vote on ousting the speaker if he wants, and the speaker could be removed instantly if he crossed them.

Representative Norman has also shown a willingness to negotiate. He said the devil was in the details when asked if he would vote for Mr. McCarthy.

Several of the lawmakers who have declined to back Mr. McCarthy have not answered questions about what would be needed to convince them to drop their objections, or avoided a grilling from conservative media outlets.

Some returning lawmakers voted for a different person besides Mr. McCarthy including Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana, and Representatives Mary Miller of Illinois and Andy Harris of Maryland.

Some of the lawmakers have pushed for votes on specific bills, like legislation requiring term limits for lawmakers. The group has also demanded their own representatives to sit on the powerful Rules Committee, which controls what legislation receives votes and the terms for debate on the House floor.

Myth America: CNN Myths about the Biggest lies and beliefs about our past, by Dr. A. Boehner, J. Zelizer, and Kevin McCarthy

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of many books, including a forthcoming co-edited work called “Myth America: Historians take on the Biggest lies andlegends about our past”. You can follow him on social media. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Take a look at more opinions on CNN.

Trump is facing a dilemma that other presidents and legislative leaders have faced before. The leaders inspire a younger generation of politicians to follow in their footsteps. Former Speaker John Boehner, himself part of the Gingrich generation of Republicans that rocked Washington by abandoning old norms of governance and promoting a much more aggressive version of partisanship, repeatedly clashed with the Tea Party legislators he opened the doors of power to.

Over time, the acolytes demand more and become more extreme than the leader who originally welcomed them into the fold. Jim Jordan, a Republican, was later blasted by the speaker as “legislative terrorists”. They were rebels who had become the establishment.

Defeated in the 1912 election, he returned two years later and served several additional terms as a rank and file member. He was on the cover of the first issue of Time Magazine, which was issued on March 3, 1923.

Kevin McCarthy is the latest Republican leader to find out that it’s impossible to get ahead of his party’s inexorable march to its far-right extremes.

It was two years ago that the worst attack on American Democracy in modern times took place, and he is finding out that even a career enhancing bet can’t open doors for Trump’s younger followers in the GOP.

Two years ago, scores of House Republicans refused to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and many spent years appeasing Trump’s lawless behavior. The GOP is in charge of half of Capitol Hill, after driving democracy to the brink, or will eventually get its act together and pick a speaker.

Georgia lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene is complaining that her Republican colleagues are too extreme in their opposition to McCarthy.

But even in the wake of the attack on the US Capitol, the right-wing media machine and a still-angry base of voters mean there are strong political incentives for disruptor politicians in the ex-president’s image.

This isn’t chaos. This is a constitutional republic at work. This is actually a really beautiful thing,” Boebert said. She is correct that the most essential elements of governing are based on rules and procedures, the ones that Trump wanted to disrupt with his attempts to overturn the 2020 Electoral College votes.

The Gaetz straitjacket: What Kevin Gaetz can do to end the political stalemate in the Newt Gingrich era

But her arguments founder on the reality of the rebels’ behavior. Many other Republicans have complained that it is not clear exactly what concessions the group around Gaetz, who have vowed to never support McCarthy, actually want.

“This ends one of two ways: Either Kevin McCarthy withdraws from the race, or we construct a straitjacket that he is unable to evade,” Gaetz, who cast his vote in the seventh round for Trump, told reporters on Thursday.

The candidate that the most extreme hardliners will accept must share their no-compromise, Nihilistic form of politics.

The culmination of anti-establishment, anti-government forces began decades ago when Newt Gingrich led the 1994 Republican revolution. They were also the brains behind the anti-Washington Tea Party movement. Trump then drove out much of the governing wing of the GOP as he effectively worked to bring down the institutions of government and accountability from inside as president.

Even so, Fitzpatrick told CNN that he was confident that a deal could be reached to end the stalemate.

Several members said they were very close to a deal that in many ways is an attempt to rebuild frayed alliances and trust hampered by a harsh Tuesday morning conference meeting.

The Golden Era of House Speaker Ben McHenry: The Legacy of the First Senate Deal, and the Implications for the Future

The main agenda of the conservatives is overspending and the nature of the Republican majority, said a key McCarthy ally. That’s really the crux of the conversation. That is really the shape of it.

“Rules, structure and process dictate outcomes in this place, in a substantial way,” McHenry said. All those things need to be in place.

He said that there was immense amount of effort to take the emotion out of this and get into the substance of the challenges.

McHenry said they are not discussing issues like specific committee assignments for holdouts, but talking about their agenda around issues like spending.

Norman toldCNN that the deal he saw in Minnesota was changes that he wanted.

Norman said the majority of the deal is about rule changes like a 72 hour rule to review bills and open amendments. Norman said the deal did not address committee assignments.

McCarthy also denied that any members would lose committee assignments and said there have been no negotiations that involved giving subcommittee chairmanships to dissidents.

McCarthy was defiant earlier in the day on Thursday in the face of the stiff headwinds, saying that he will continue to face opposition until he reaches a deal with his detractors.

After enduring 11 straight defeats in an election that is now the longest contest of its kind in 150 years, Mr. McCarthy dispatched his emissaries to negotiate terms with the ultraconservative rebels.

You’ve probably heard that the Speaker failed multiple times in a row for the first time in about a century. Is this a new level of problem for congress?

John Farrell is the author and historian who we’ve turned to to answer that question. He wrote biographies of former House Speaker Tippy O’Neill and SenatorTed Kennedy.

I think it’s part of a continuing deterioration of order on Capitol Hill that really dates back to the Berlin Wall coming down and the end of the Cold War. We were freed from that common enemy and there was nothing we could do to stop fighting. And so this golden era that we remember, from World War II on through the 1950s and ’60s, is gone now. We were in the 1920s, or the 1880s, or the 1850s.

The huge Speaker battles happened when America was struggling with large economic and regional issues like slavery, and before the Civil War. It’s been rare in the 20th century, and so far in this century, but it could be a sign of things to come.

The Last Low: What Did America Do Before We Were Born? What Do We Expect to Learn From Social Media? When Did America Get What You Want?

It may be a new low, but things were never golden, really. You had Richard Nixon join the red hunters as a congressman while he was young, to bring him to power. You had Newt Gingrich in the 1990s convincing the Republicans that they needed to be nastier. Even one of our more staid, regular members now, Jim Jordan, started as a member of the Freedom Caucus as the bomb thrower.

So over time, these guys see that there’s a path in the institution and they become institutionalists. But there’s always room for somebody to make their name by being the louder, more explosive member of the group.

I think you should never underestimate individual careerism. The cable news atmosphere and social media seem to be giving almost a reward in their own way. When you go on a cable TV show, you write on a social media account, and then you are popular on your own. You do not need to depend on the Republican Party to get donations. If you were in a Gingrich era, for example, you had to feel like you were being watched because the big party donors would call and say, “Get in line.”

If you are a bar owner in Rifle, Colorado and you notice that you are being watched by a Fox News host, and you also use a social media platform to do so, that’s because you have a life of loneliness and obscurity. If there is an ideological payback down the line, you don’t care.

I don’t think they give us a lot of information. I believe they say that we can expect more chaos in the short term. But we just came away from a presidency in which the president was impeached twice. So it’s a spectacle, politics was always meant to be a spectacle. The wisdom of the founding fathers meant that politics in this country was supposed to be mud wrestling games with no obvious preeminence of power. Yes, we fought a revolution against King George. But in the early days, the founding fathers were just as suspicious and worried about the parliament having too much power. It’s all supposed to be balanced. There is going to be lots of stalemates and there will be times of chaos.

A Conversation between Kevin McCarthy and Mike Rogers in the Electoral Subcommittee Room of the Senate Minority Caucus

After McCarthy walked away from Gaetz, looking dejected, Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers moved toward the conversation and lunged at Gaetz, having to be physically restrained by Republican Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina. Rogers, a Republican from Alabama who earlier in the week warned the GOP dissidents they would lose their committee assignments, told Gaetz he would be “finished” for continuing to wreck the speaker’s vote.

Nearby, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was trying to convince Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana, another McCarthy holdout, to take her cell phone and speak to former President Donald Trump, who was on the line.

With less than a minute left to go, Gaetz moved toward the front of the chamber, grabbing a red index card to vote no on adjournment. Gaetz walked toward McCarthy, and the two briefly exchanged words. McCarthy yelled out, “One more!” while raising his hand. as he triumphantly walked toward the front of the chamber to change his vote, too. The last negotiation was the final one the GOP leader would have with a splinter of his conference that held him captive for four days. McCarthy and Gaetz had to fight for their victory as many Republicans followed them to defeat the adjournment measure.

McCarthy said that Gaetz was not offered the gavel he requested earlier in the week for his vote. McCarthy said that no one gets promised anything.

Afterwards, McCarthy was accused of acting in bad faith by the Florida Republican after asking for a list of demands.

That meeting – where Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado called out “bulls**t” on McCarthy and where the GOP leader engaged in heated exchanges with Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania – set the stage for the furious four-day battle.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/07/politics/kevin-mccarthy-path-to-speakership/index.html

The 118th Congress, a day after the attack on the Capitol, concludes with a report by Biden and the House of Representatives

At noon, the House gaveled in the 118th Congress, and lawmakers swarmed the House floor, children in tow, for what was supposed to begin a day of pageantry. The doors to the House floor were closed in a sign of new Republican rules after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Trump continued to keep the House drama at arms’ length until Friday, when he made calls to Gaetz and Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona while they were on the House floor. After McCarthy won the speakership, Trump congratulated him on his social media site.

Instead, lawmakers followed two tracks into the evening, taking vote after vote on the House floor for speaker while negotiations continued behind closed doors.

At the same time that the House was voting on a new speaker, Biden was speaking in Kentucky at an event with McConnell promoting the infrastructure bill he helped pass. The White House and Senate Republicans were shown a split screen of Biden’s speech.

It wasn’t clear whether the meeting would lead to a breakthrough. Gaetz pledged that the McCarthy dissenters could continue to hold votes “until the cherry blossoms fall off the trees.” Boebert said the “boats are burned” when it comes to any future negotiations with McCarthy.

The GOP dissidents sounded positive. “We’re making some progress,” Bishop told CNN as he was walking into a meeting Thursday morning with other GOP hardliners.

The offer was written on paper by the early evening. The three key negotiators met with McCarthy in his ceremonial office after a group reviewed the written agreement to break the stalemate. Another group huddled in the member’s dining room on the first floor of the Capitol to discuss a separate part of the written deal.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/07/politics/kevin-mccarthy-path-to-speakership/index.html

The First Day of the Second Congress: The House Speaker’s Report from Hunt During the January 6, 2021, Flare Attack on the Capitol

One factor complicating the talks was a handful Republicans were expected to leave Washington due to various family issues. Buck left for the procedure on Thursday afternoon. Rep. Wesley Hunt flew back to Texas to be with his wife and newborn, who had to spend some time in the neonatal intensive care unit.

On Friday morning, House Democrats marked the second anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the steps of the Capitol. Just one Republican attended: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

McCarthy was optimistic that he would win over some holdovers, despite still being pessimistic about the finish line.

The end of the speaker fight was near before the House came back to session, with both Gaetz and Boebert saying that they were cautiously optimistic about the rules changes the holdouts had won.

Early Saturday morning, following 14 losses and more than 84 hours after the beginning of the 118th Congress, the House clerk finally announced McCarthy was elected House speaker.

McCarthy had sounded optimistic about the fight over the gavel, saying that it would aid the Republicans. This is the part that people don’t think about. Because it took this long, now we’ve learned how to govern,” McCarthy said. “So now we’ll be able to get the job done.”

What Happened to the Chaos Caucus? Revisiting the Giant Poverty of the Republican Party: A Political Comment on Charlie Dent

Charlie Dent is a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who chaired the House Ethics Committee for three years and was also chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs and related agencies. He is a CNN political commentator. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

It is a question of if surrendering your way to victory is really winning. And when will this appeasement ever end, considering it only makes this extremist faction more powerful?

We are in a year’s time. The malcontents are still digging in – the only difference now is that there is a smaller governing majority. Actually, there really is no GOP governing majority at all, and the world will learn that soon enough.

A paradigm shift is long overdue. Pragmatic and rational Republican members, who bristled at the concessions McCarthy handed to Gaetz and his ilk, must force a course correction and change the dynamics.

If there isn’t enough GOP votes for a more reasonable rules package, then it’s time to try something new. Rational Republicans should find a way to get enough votes for a rules package that rolls back some of the hardliners’ demands.

The hardliners also secured a promise that a McCarthy-aligned super PAC would not intervene in open, safe seat GOP primaries. The more fringe elements are given more power, the more disinterested Congress will be in governing. These are inexplicable acts of self-destruction.

It was time to stop feeding the crocodiles. Rational Republicans must stand, fight and resist. Two people can play this game. If the diabolical demands and tactics of the chaos caucus didn’t upset them enough, consider this quote from Gaetz: “I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for.”

The House’s ability to function is at stake. America’s authoritarian adversaries around the world point to democracy as outdated and unable to meet the needs of its people. It’s time to prove them wrong by stamping out the extremist elements within our midst who deny the results of free and fair elections and wish to wreak havoc on America’s hallowed temple of democracy.

The House of Representatives began grinding through what would be 15 roll- call votes for a Speaker this week, but Republican nominee Kevin McCarthy said he was not opposed to setting a record for such votes.

That may have been simply an appeal for patience. McCarthy could not have been serious about breaking the actual record, which remains the 133 ballots needed in 1855. He may have been thinking of the highest number needed since that record, which was a relatively modest nine rounds of votes in 1923.

The holder of that 1855 record for most votes was a member from Massachusetts named Nathaniel Banks but known for his alliterative nickname “bobbin boy” (a holdover from his childhood job in a textile factory). Banks was a member of the American Party which was well known for its views on immigration.

The party was also known for resisting questions with claims of innocence. “I know nothing about the party, so I became known as Nothing Knows,” they said. Despite that, in their heyday they had about a third of the seats in the House in 1855.

The First Three Years: When Andrew Banks and William Sumner Met on the Floor of the House of Representative Sumner, a Faint Democrat and the founder of the Confederacy

Banks was against expansion of slavery in the western states. That long-simmering issue had been thrust to the forefront in his day by the frightening violence among abolitionist and pro-slavery settlers along the Kansas-Missouri border.

Some of that passion was manifest around the Capitol as well, with members sometimes coming to blows. Just a few months after Banks became speaker, Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner was beaten to the floor in the Senate chambers by a cane-wielding Rep. Preston Brooks from South Carolina, an incident depicted in many a high school history textbook.

The Republican Party was rising from the ashes of the old Whig Party because of the focus on slavery. But there were Democrats and several other parties in the mix, and Banks was just one of 21 candidates nominated on the first day of voting. Midway through that December, on the 33rd ballot, Banks pulled into the lead for the first time over a pro-slavery Democrat from Illinois.

The original schedule was followed by Congress in this era. A Congress that is elected in November of an even-numbered year would be in office by March, but won’t get to work until December. Each new Congress convenes on Jan. 3 of the odd-number year under the current schedule.

Needless to say, the overriding concern of that 36th Congress was the threat of civil war, with abolitionists in ascendance on one side and defenders of slavery and states rights on the other.

A decade earlier, a similar showdown had needed more ballots (63), but only a few weeks’ time in 1849. The pro-slavery Democrats gained the upper hand and chose one of their own, who later became the governor of Georgia as well as a founder of the Confederacy.

The 31st Congress has two legislative landmarks, the Fugitive Slave Act and the Compromise of 1850, which sought to settle the issue of slavery in the territories just acquired in the war.

Three decades earlier, it had required 22 ballots in the 16th Congress to settle on John Taylor of New York as a successor to Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky, who resigned after negotiating the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Clay’s deal allowed Missouri to have enslaved people, and Maine to be a free state, making it difficult for other states to decide whether to allow slavery or not.

His rather reluctant successor was Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who had nine GOP colleagues vote against him. He cut that number to just one in winning a full term in the job in 2017, but found the battle with hardliners too exhausting and retired voluntarily the next year.

Having survived that, Gingrich would face down an uprising within his own leadership team that same year but then resign as speaker before the end of the next (prompted by a revolt in the full GOP caucus).

An editorial in The New York Times written by Brendan Buck, who was a former staffer and strategist for both Ryan and Boehner, was very blunt. “If Republicans are unable to muster the votes for a speaker,” Buck warned, “it will make it very clear from the outset that they cannot be counted on to fulfill the body’s basic responsibilities …”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/1147626390/mccarthy-republican-party-congress

The House of Commons, a prisoner’s advocate for civil liberation, is unpopular in the era of the Civil War

For many hours day after day, the House displays a deep sense of division and the image of the institution has been reinforced as unserious due to the conflicts of ego and ideology.

When we think about the speakership fights leading up to the Civil War, we think about all the consequences of such lack of order in the national government. They affect us all.