The House GOP conference kicked off another closed-door meeting Wednesday morning to nominate a new speaker candidate roughly one week after eight House Republicans banded with Democrats to remove Kevin McCarthy from his post.
It remained unclear Wednesday morning whether Republicans are positioned to nominate a consensus speaker candidate via secret ballot by the end of the day, let alone this week, amid mounting pressure to respond to the terrorist group Hamas’s cross-border assault on Israel. The House is set to reconvene Wednesday afternoon.
Wednesday’s meeting comes on the heels of a closed-door candidate forum Tuesday evening in the Longworth House building on Capitol Hill, where the two declared candidates —House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan — answered questions from members about their respective candidacies. Cell-phones were prohibited from the meeting to prevent members from leaking to reporters.
Members also discussed Tuesday evening the possibility of adopting a new rule that would require a speaker candidate to win 217 votes — a majority of the entire House of Representatives — in conference rather than a simple majority of the House GOP conference before they bring a speaker vote to the floor, largely to avoid a repeat of McCarthy’s drawn out 15-ballot fight for the gavel. House Republicans have also discussed amending the single-member motion to vacate rule that prompted McCarthy’s ouster in the first place.
In interviews Tuesday evening, House Republicans remained bitterly divided about who has what it takes to lead the now legislatively paralyzed GOP. That uncertainty has some members raising the possibility that a dark horse candidate may soon emerge out of the woodwork.
“I think we may not have heard from the next speaker yet,” Representative John Rutherford (R., Fla.) told National Review Tuesday evening.
That possibility has some members in a panic about what could come next. “It takes guts to do what they did,” Representative Pat Fallon (R., T.X.) told National Review Tuesday evening of Jordan’s and Scalise’s decisions to run for speaker. But even he fully admits that it remains unclear where most of the eight Republicans who supported McCarthy’s ouster stand with respect to both candidates. “I don’t know where they particularly are.”
Representative Dan Bishop (R., N.C.), one of eight Republican to support McCarthy’s ouster, is backing Jordan’s bid. But even he told National Review Tuesday evening that this is a “dynamic situation” and “there are a lot of possibilities.”
This is a developing story.