There's no way this can happen. Too many facist-left RATS want to poke us all in the butt with a Pelosi.
Remember, speaker is voted on by the entire house. We only need 12 democrats to vote with a unified republican vote and Boren could be speaker.
I'm not sure though if that would effect who gets majority positions on committees, I don't think that's a SPEAKER job, that's a majority leader job, which I presume would still be Pelosi if she didn't get speaker.
BTW, they could also put someone at Speaker that is NOT a member of the house.
Yes there is. If all the Republicans threw their support behind him along with enough conservative Democrats. Normally voting for Speaker is just a formality. Each party has a candidate, and all the member vote strictly along party lines. It could get really interesting if a cross-partizan coalition could thwart the Democrat leadership.
Back in the '80s Republicans proposed such deals with conservative and moderate Democrats to thwart the power of the left wing Democrats. The Democrats only have about a 24 seat majority that is actually smaller than the lame duck Republican majority. I don't think they know how to keep a slim majority together as effectively as Republicans have been able to.