I seem to recall hearing that one thing Ryan insisted on was changing the rule on voting out the speaker, but don’t know it if happened or not.
“The Wisconsin Republican wants to get rid of a procedural rule that allows Speakers to be removed with a simple majority vote at any time. As CQ/Roll Call’s Matt Fuller pointed out, the existence of that rule was why Boehner was so willing to resign early.
“There is actually no House Rule that would help remove a Speaker from his seat, according to the Brookings Foundation, but Jefferson’s Manual, America’s first book on procedure, allows for the move. The manual, written by former President Thomas Jefferson, is the go-to rulebook when there isn’t a House Rule on the issue.”
If so, anyone know what it takes now to get rid of the speaker? A 3/4 vote? 2/3? This isn’t surprising since the excuse they use now for doing absolutely nothing to oppose Obama or for that matter, to do anything constructive is they lack the votes, so naturally they make it almost impossible for us to toss them out.
IN other words, Pelosi could take back the chair and it might be impossible to remove her, even if a lot of the Democrats thought she needed to go.
IOW, they have labeled Jefferson’s procedural rule as a “nuclear option” (the Democrats’ term) and in the future Democrats will be able to say, “Hey, you made the rule ...”.
Frustrated by being unable to legislate by simple majority, the RINOs change a rule that has been in effect for the life of the country to establish as a rule a super majority vote requirement ... `to protect the institution’ (as Boehner put it)?