UPDATE (Oct. 20, 2023 12:10 p.m. ET): On Friday afternoon, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, lost a third vote in his bid to become speaker of the House, with even more Republican defections than before. There may be another vote
Thursday was a dizzying day, even by Washington standards, and yet it ended exactly as it began. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is still in the running to become speaker of the House. He still doesn’t have the votes to win the gavel. And there’s still no solution Republicans are willing to accept to get themselves out of this mess they made.
For a brief moment, it looked as though the paralysis that has taken hold of the House might be ending. As a tally of Jordan’s supporters showed shrinking support, momentum had built up around a potential escape hatch: empowering Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., to temporarily get things running again. Thursday morning, Jordan told reporters he was willing to back a proposal that would have seen McHenry run the show until January — but insisted he was still the speaker-designee and could call a new speaker election on the floor at any time before then.
As has been the case so often during the 10 months of this Republican majority, chaos ensued. McHenry seemed unwilling to run the risk of being accused of backstabbing Jordan, which had the effect of throwing cold water on the idea. He also rejected the idea floated in recent days that members try to bring legislation to the floor without voting for him to take on more powers. According to NBC News, McHenry threatened to resign if Republicans attempted to do that.
As has been the case so often during the 10 months of this Republican majority, chaos ensued.
More crucially, members of the far-right wing of the caucus, home to Jordan’s biggest backers, refused to follow his lead. “I’m against ‘Speaker Light’; I’m against Bud Light,” Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told reporters, displaying the same level of analysis and foresight that went into his decision to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., two weeks ago. “I believe it is a constitutional desecration to not elect a speaker of the House. We need to stay here until we elect a speaker.” (Fact-check: Despite what Gaetz and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, have indicated, it is not unconstitutional to elect a temporary speaker.)
As GOP members trickled out of the four-hour-long meeting, it was clear there weren’t Republican votes to get any resolution boosting McHenry over the line, meaning Democratic votes would be needed. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., said the potential solution would be a “historic betrayal” and “the biggest ‘eff you’ to Republican voters.” He predicted that “more than half of Republicans” would vote against such a resolution. Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, guessed more like two-thirds of Republicans would be against it.
“So now because of this ugly process, what has this party done? It has enabled the Democrats to determine the way forward, in part because if all 212 Democrats vote for this resolution, it will pass. If all of them oppose it, it will fail,” Fallon said, according to NBC News.
It bears mentioning that as Thursday’s maelstrom was raging among Republicans, it wasn’t a given that Democrats would provide the votes to temporarily install McHenry. The biggest sticking point was Jordan’s determination not to bow out but to remain in the speaker race. Democrats fear he’d just use the intervening weeks to continue whipping votes for his bid, increasing the pressure campaign that has already led to death threats against his own caucus members.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has expressed willingness to support McHenry as a temporary fix, but granting Jordan more time to obtain the gavel remains a nonstarter. Jeffries reportedly laid out for his members at a meeting on Thursday two of the conditions a Republican would have to meet to get Democrats’ support. That Republican must have voted to certify the 2020 election and must agree to honor the deal on spending caps that McCarthy and President Joe Biden agreed to in June. (McCarthy, notably, went back on that deal under pressure from Gaetz and other conservatives, which helped lead to his downfall. When Gaetz filed his motion to oust McCarthy, Democrats refused to step in to save him.) The plot since McCarthy was removed from the speakership feels less like a linear story and more like an improv scene between two drunk amateurs at a failing community theater. Could Jordan still become speaker? I mean, yeah, sure, there’s a nonzero chance: like, say, the odds of flipping an elephant five times and having it land on its feet every time. But after Jordan spent Thursday afternoon huddling with the 22 holdouts who voted against him the previous day and with McCarthy and McHenry, he didn’t appear any closer to the speakership. Meanwhile, Rep. David Joyce, R-Ohio, who has been working on figuring out the parameters of a resolution empowering McHenry, indicated that he was still willing to put the proposal to a vote. There would be a window for him to introduce it between McHenry’s gaveling the House back into session on Friday and either launching a third vote on Jordan’s bid or declaring another recess. But such a maneuver brings us back to claims from within the caucus that the resolution wouldn’t have a chance at getting passed. As has long been the case, guessing what happens next is a fool’s errand. Things that seem like sure bets are subject to evaporate in an instant. Counting to 217 continues to vex and frustrate people whose job it is to spend trillions of dollars. The plot since McCarthy was removed from the speakership feels less like a linear story and more like an improv scene between two drunk amateurs at a failing community theater. The House GOP may have the majority on paper, but in practice, it’s everybody for themselves. Jordan’s failed attempt to allow for a compromise, something alien to his nature, makes it clear that for the members who best represent the true GOP base, nothing short of total victory will be counted as a win. When presented with an escape hatch that would end this paralysis, those all-or-nothing Republicans decided that rather than be accused of cowardice, they’d rather not just stay put but also dynamite the entrance, letting the country go down in flames.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
