Posted on 11/30/2022 6:02:16 AM PST by cotton1706
House Republicans’ speaker nominee Kevin McCarthy does not yet have enough votes to win a floor election in January, but he told reporters Tuesday he will not drop out of the running and plans to take the fight to the floor if necessary.
“We’ll have 218,” the California Republican said, referring to the number of votes necessary to win a majority of the House in the floor election. “I'll get there.”
Before the Thanksgiving recess, the House Republican Conference nominated McCarthy for speaker. He earned 188 votes in the secret-ballot conference nomination. His opponent, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, earned 31 and another five write-in votes went to candidates whose names were not disclosed.
McCarthy needs to win over a vast majority of those 36 opponents if he wants to be elected speaker in the January floor vote. While two House races remain uncalled, the final party split is expected to be 222-212, with one vacancy after Virginia Democratic Rep. A. Donald McEachin died Monday just weeks after being reelected.
Despite that vacancy, the majority threshold McCarthy needs to reach still remains 218 if all other members participate in the vote. The only way for McCarthy to lower that is if lawmakers are absent or vote “present,” as only members voting for a speaker candidate by name count toward determining the majority threshold.
(Excerpt) Read more at rollcall.com ...
Andy Biggs is useless
I read somewhere a list of about six items that Biggs and his conservative supporters want McCarthy to agree to on operation and rule changes — that’s all this takes. Give us die-hards a little bit of our way and we will join in.
There are 188 republicans out of 220 that already support McCarthy.
The house republicans are overwhelmingly moderates. We need to accept that fact and move on
This battle is over already. It was won in the republican house primary campaigns months ago. We did get rid of Cheney in the primaries, but that’s only one person. The problem is that they all try to sound conservative in the primary campaigns.
99% chance it’ll be 222-213. The two uncalled races are both 500-600 R lead, so recount would have to be 3rd deviation in Ds favor to overturn
But they don't WANT you to join in.
Agreed.
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