Multiple members emerged from the House GOP’s speaker forum on Tuesday saying they don’t see either candidate being any closer to having the votes needed to secure the gavel on the floor.
Driving the news: “No one is close to 217,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) said after Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La) and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) pitched members on why they believe they should be the next speaker.
Kevin McCarthy explicitly said that they know the government was designed with compromise, but they don’t want to, because they’re in the majority and therefore should be able to do whatever they want.
I don’t disagree, but want to add that the beauty of this clusterfuck is that they’re so damn selfish that they even lack the ability to get anything done even with the majority.
Like…you literally have the votes for whatever you wanna do, all you have to do is agree amongst yourselves, and they can’t even manage that. There’s no “we”. Even though “they” have the majority, they really don’t, since a majority doesn’t mean anything if you can’t organize your party.
Of course all of this completely ignores the other 200 plus members of the House, but it’s just plain beyond the realm of possibility to even imagine a world where the GOP centrists, sick of the stupidity from the MAGA wing, lean over the aisle and go, “Okay we’re sick of trying to appease them. What would it take to get a dozen of you guys to sign off on a piece of legislation?”
And the only reason that’s unthinkable is because the entire party is just as pigheaded as Gaetz, they’re just less extreme in their positions and less loudmouthed about it.