House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called for Republicans to “get their act together” and elect the next speaker while slamming the “extremists” within their party.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called for Republicans to “get their act together” and elect the next speaker while slamming the “extremists” within their party.
I think there are three key things you are missing here.
First, the Motion to Vacate is just a rule, and those rules can be changed my a majority of the House - conveniently the same threshold that is needed to elect a Speaker. It is quite possible that a bipartisan coalition to elect a Speaker would also negotiate a change to the rules for the Motion, similar to what Pelosi did when she was Speaker, and wanted to make sure her thim majority could be effective.
Second, I am assuming that any hypothetical support of a moderate Republican by Democrats would not be in conflict with Democratic leadership or a challenge to their authority. On the contrary, it would be done with their blessing, extracting concessions from the new Speaker that the Democratic Leadership would find acceptable. And there are ways to hold that Speaker accountable that stop short of firing him.
Third, I am assuming that any coalition support would be done in favor of a Speaker who is actually interested in governing, and not in burning the place down. So all they really need to fundamentally agree on is to not hold the government hostage every other vote. All the other stuff is noise compared to that. Once the “burn it all down” Caucus is relegated to the minority side in the House, there is much less damage they can do. (Compare this to the Senate, where one “Coach” can dictate the entire playbook.)
Remember, as I said in my original post, there are some Democrats who would be either unwilling or unable to actually go along with all this without themselves committing political suicide. If, for example, you have 5 Democrats who can’t go along with this, that means you now need 9 Republicans willing to put their own standing in the party at risk. The more Democrats that either can’t or won’t go through with it, the more Republicans you need, and therefore the less likely any of this is to actually happen.
And how do you go about doing that in any meaningful way that the GOP can’t just shut down with a majority vote? How do you do that without threatening to oust that speaker and putting us right back in this position, only without a bipartisan coalition next time as Democrats say “see? I told you this wouldn’t work.”
The ones who might be willing/able to do it while still being palatable to Democrats wouldn’t want to be within 10 miles of that gavel right now. Notice how all the ones willing to step up to the plate are the ones that are just as bad or worse than McCarthy was.
And while we’re at it, we can ask serial killers to just not kill people every other day. Heck, can’t we just ask criminals to stop doing crime stuff? I’m sure doing so will be just as effective. These people are here specifically to hold the government hostage on every other vote. Why do you think no sane Republican (an oxymoron, I know) wants to go anywhere near that gavel right now? They’d be in the same position McCarthy was, if not worse.
I think this is the main reason. Also, you don’t become speaker just to be speaker. You do it to advance further, either to higher elected positions or, more likely, to lucrative party fundraising, consulting, speaking engagements, writing books, and/or private sector positions. In today’s world no speaker who is elected with the help of Democrats has a future in the Republican party, anywhere. It’s career suicide. Not just losing elected office. They will be blacklisted everywhere. It won’t happen.
It all depends on how willing the rest of the Republican Caucus is to force out the Freedom Caucus nutters. I don’t believe a majority of their caucus is aligned with them, because if they were, they would have never moved the Debt Ceiling or CR votes forward. Both votes were overwhelmingly bipartisan, with a majority of Republicans specifically voting against burning it all down in both votes.