So recently Kevin McCarthy was outed as speaker after Matt Gaetz called a motion to vacate, in which any 1 member could call a vote to vacate the chair, which in layman’s terms just means to force a vote to oust the speaker. You can read about that, and about the 118th Congress rules here.
This was part of the original deal McCarthy had with the extreme faction of his party to become speaker in the first place. After this debacle, there was a public feud between the extremists of the party such as Gaetz, Jordan, and MTG vs. the less extreme members like Kinzinger, and the other more moderate members of the caucus.
After that whole fiasco, now we’re currently over a week without a Republican speaker still. At least count, Steve Scalise had 113 votes, and Jim Jordan only had 99 both far short of what they’d need. So then after Steve Scalise dropped out of the speakership race, Hakeem Jefferies decided to take the bi-partisan approach and is working actively with the more reasonable members of his party. Would be huge if he could pull off such a win. Would be the biggest slap in the face you could give the MAGA extremists.
“There are informal conversations that have been underway. When we get back to Washington tomorrow, it’s important to begin to formalize those discussions,” the New York Democrat said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
When asked what House Democrats might be asking for a deal with House Republicans, Jeffries said his caucus wants “to ensure that votes are taken on bills that have substantial Democratic support and substantial Republican support so that the extremists aren’t able to dictate the agenda.”
Makes sense. There’s quite a few bills out there that would undoubtedly have Democratic and Republican support across the aisle, and it’s important extremists aren’t able to dictate exactly what comes to the floor and what doesn’t because if the speaker doesn’t bow down to their extremist views they’ll threatened to be ousted just as McCarthy was on October 3rd.
So I wholeheartedly support Hakeem Jeffries in his attempt to become speaker, some things might actually get done because if we control what comes to the floor, and if those bills have bi-partisan support, there’s not much the freedom caucus would be able to do to prevent those bills from passing. Obviously the Senate is a separate issue, but typically the Republican Senator’s are mostly speaking, far more reasonable then their house counterparts with limited exceptions.
I’ll be following this issue closely and update this article with any relevant information as soon as it becomes available. So hopefully we hear some positive news going forward about how Jeffries was able to secure a deal with the reasonable Republicans in the caucus and become speaker so we can get to work on passing meaningful legislation to benefit the lives of everyday Americans.
That’s a far better alternative instead of the usual bullshit about gas stoves, abortion, demonizing trans people, complaining about gas prices, and the border and all the other fear mongering they do on a daily basis instead of raising actual policies that could benefit people. But what else can you expect from the Republican party these days? If they stopped fear mongering they’d never win another election because it’s all they have at this point.
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