Thanks for alerting us to this story. It's one of the craziest political capers I've seen in a while. I'd rather kick Williams' ass out of the Party, lose the majority and use the event as a rallying cry for 2010 then recognize a guy like Williams as any kind of Leader.
Short of finding a way to remove him from the legislature, this stunt will stand for 2 whole years. We don’t, to my knowledge, have a recall option for legislators. Speakers are very autocratic and have absolute power (the legislature, with a one-seat majority could govern without input from the Governor), so the Republicans can remain totally shut out, even with a technical majority (of course, that’s not the case any more). We only have a majority in the overall general assembly of both bodies, which is good for electing Constitutional officers (although we’re about to find out if even that will work tomorrow when they vote on them), but we need majorities electing Republicans to the Speakerships or we get nothing.