But there’s still no guarantee the GOP’s next pick for speaker will be able to secure the needed 217 votes on the House floor, as some lawmakers aren’t signing a “unity” pledge.
Three weeks after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster, House Republicans will gather behind closed doors Tuesday morning to nominate a new candidate for speaker — their third attempt to fill the job.
A GOP civil war has prevented Republicans from agreeing on a successor to McCarthy, R-Calif. The GOP’s two previous picks bowed out after they failed to secure the votes needed to win on the floor, leaving the House in a state of unprecedented chaos with a possible government shutdown less than a month away and wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.
“The world is burning around us, and American leadership is necessary. And you can’t have the full complement of American leadership if the House of Representatives is not functioning,” Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press NOW," emphasizing the need for his colleagues to move on and coalesce around a new leader.
This is the way it’s always worked. The difference is that usually, the closed-door vote is a mundane formality before bringing the vote to the floor, and there’s no soap-opera drama happening in the room that anyone would care about, so we usually hear little to nothing about it.
This time it’s just slightly different. Can’t exactly put my finger on how though… ;)