Posted on 11/30/2022 9:14:53 AM PST by omegatoo
Hi all,
I think that saying that a Democrat might win the speakership is purely a scare tactic.
From what I am reading, the speaker must win a simple majority of total votes cast, so 218 if all vote. If the dissenting Republicans vote for anyone other than McCarthy there is no way McCarthy can reach majority unless democrats vote for him. Representatives can vote for anyone. They are not limited to choosing between the nominees.
As long as Republicans don’t vote for the Democrat nominee, the Democrat can’t reach majority either. As much as I detest the Rinos, I don’t think they would vote for a democrat.
Even though the dissenting Republicans won’t have enough votes to elect anyone else, they can spoil the speaker election indefinitely.
The worst that would happen if the dissenters stand firm is that there will be no speaker for an indefinite period of time.
Would the Democrats cross over and vote for McCarthy? If so McCarthy still wins speakership, but he wins it having to live with being elected by his opposition.
The outcome wouldn’t change, but at least we would have had some Republicans demonstrate that they actually have backbones.
Best case is that the opposition in the Republican party holds or even grows and they stall the process so long that McCarthy has to withdraw.
What happens after that is anybody’s guess.
I would appreciate it if somebody with more knowledge of the process could jump in here to let me know if this is actually the case.
Love, O2
Uh, pretty certain there aren’t enough “conservative” repubs to make much difference these days. 🤔
Yes, and he’d be fine with it.
Would the Democrats cross over and vote for McCarthy? If so McCarthy still wins speakership, but he wins it having to live with being elected by his opposition.
The question is what will the RINOs do when McCarthy doesn’t have the votes from his caucus to be elected Speaker of the House? They can either rally behind a MAGA candidate for Speaker like Gaetz, or expose themselves as Uniparty moles and join with the Dems to elect an anti-MAGA Republican. Let them expose themselves. It’s better to have their loyalty out in the open rather than let them hide under a rock only to bite us later when their votes are needed.
Isn’t a simple majority a plurality, so whoever wins the most votes wins? If not, wouldn’t McCarthy have to assume his caucus are all idiots to not know that. Yeah scare tactic if you are dealing with idiots that is why you have to count your votes ahead of time. If all the dems vote Nancy and 5 r vote for someone else or abstain, Nancy gets it, otherwise why would Mccarthy even care, it’s not like someone else is going to get 218 votes by surprise. Ryan had to make sure he had a majority to exceed the number of dems by winning over the freedom caucus, before he held a vote for speaker.
The RINOs will not elect a Republican alternative to McCarthy.
They will elect Hakeem Jeffries to prove they are not ice people, and that they love sun people.
” As much as I detest the Rinos, I don’t think they would vote for a democrat.”
The much more likely scenario is the Democrats and some Republicans agreeing to vote for a soft RINO as speaker.
Depends upon the wishes of the uniparty. They could gather enough votes for either a Dim or a Dim-lite speaker.
There is a third option, which is to rally around an “outsider” who isn’t tainted with being part of the swamp but isn’t die hard MAGA. I think that is more likely than a Dem speaker, but less likely than Dems helping out McCarthy.
Should the scenario happen that McCarthy doesn’t win the Speakership on the first couple of ballots, my guess is that the Republican conference could coalesce behind Steve Scalise as Speaker.
The rinos have already threatened to join with the democrats to form a uniparty cleaner ship and elect a democrat controlled officers with a nominal RINO leader.
The democrats minority in Texas controlled the house this way, unifying with the rinos.
Rinos demand Party loyalty but do not practice it back.
And of course those RINOs could just as easily put Nancy back in
I am not concerned about dems crossing over to vote for McCarthy. I AM concerned about what closed door deals he would make to get those crossover votes.
What happens if the conservative Republicans block McCarthy from getting a majority?
We end up with Liz Cheney?
What happened in the Texas House was a few RINOS got together with all the Dems to elect the most liberal Republican as Speaker.
Who cares, the GOP will work overtime to screw over MAGA and President Trump whatever sock puppet is installed in the controlled opposition.
Recall when he canned the Lizard from her leadership post.
(Yes, he did a 180 from an earlier statement, but in the correct direction.)
That said, I'm disappointed that our GOP sens kept McConnell. IIRC, he let his feelings about Trump interfere with his funding of candidates (Alaska and Arizona come to mind.)
People use scare tactics to convince others that it’s either McCarthy or a Democrat for Speaker.
The reality is that if McCarthy isn’t elected Speaker it will be another Republican moderate. There aren’t enough votes in the house to elect a conservative for Speaker.
My preference would be to elect any Republican other than McCarthy. Scalise is just as bad as McCarthy (IMO). Regardless, the next Speaker will be a Republican house member.
Who cares, the GOP will work overtime to screw over MAGA and President Trump whatever sock puppet is installed in the controlled opposition.
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