Replies

Here's your link on the election of Lott to Majority Leader.

It is on this I have a very good understanding. Lott gets 26 votes in caucus, boom, he's the Republican leader. No problem.

What I'm having a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with, because it just seems "way out there," is this idea that it would take something other than 26 votes to then entertain the notion that someone else should lead.

Even if it were true there was some kind of unanimous consent requirement within the Republican Conference to advance such a notion - would it indeed work?

No, of course not. It is fanciful. The "Leader" would be unable to lead without the support of those he intends to garner. He would be out on a platform by himself. His ability to move an agenda would be compromised in the extreme.

Yes, he might get by if the support numbers were close to 26 - say 22, 23, 24, or 25. Lower than 20, and the whole notion of backing begins to fall apart as more people clearly oppose the presence of the "leader" as spokesperson for the Conference than support the person.

But, again, this presupposes some rule that argues that it is the case that 100% of the Conference would have to agree before a vote could be taken on the future of the Conference and how the group is portrayed in the public forum that is the Senate.

That is not to say there isn't such a rule, I cannot say that I have read the Senate Republican Conference rules, but absent being presented such material for perusal, I'm simply going to have to go with my common sense. And my common sense says that 26 of 51 people would not agree to a situation that would foreclose debate on the Party's future.

Unanimous consent is required to change the rules. A new rule would have to be invoked in order to hold another election for Speaker -- since it's already taken place.

Current rules, as CT explains to us, require unanimous consent to change the rules. What Lott did, apparently, is to move up the election of Speaker, thereby securing it before Bush could get the support to stop it from happening. That all took place before the Thurmond controversy.

Re-read the news articles. No one's saying it, but there is no scheduled election of the Speaker. It already happened. Lott's website makes that exceedingly clear. The only elections currently scheduled are for Sargeant at Arms, Secretary, and one or two other posts -- not for the Speaker.