[C. Edmund Wright]

CVA, they might have been steamrolled, but regardless - there were not enough freshmen to remove Boehner - outside the PELOSI SCENARIO I outlined, even if all frosh had wanted to do it.

There are over 200 Republicans in the House. Takes a helluva lot more than 40, or 16, to keep Boehner off the ballot. The only way was to join the Democrats to send a message. Might’ve been worth it in retrospect, but that’s another topic.

[central_va]

There was whole thread on it I will try to find it.

[celmak]

Boehner could have lost with 29 votes against him. If Boehner had lost, the speaker’s chair would most likely have remained vacant for some time as various candidates would have tried to build a coalition large enough to succeed him.

Granted, it would have still been difficult for Pelosi to have assembled a majority coalition — Republicans would have almost certainly preferred a vacant speakership to Speaker Pelosi — but each Democratic member gets to cast a vote in the speaker’s race that counts just as much as each Republican member’s vote. Thus, the possibility that Pelosi could have been speaker with a republican majority.