Remember when it took 15 ballots—and a bunch of self-defeating concessions—for Kevin McCarthy to win the speakership ten months ago? Well, for the Grand Old Party, that fiasco may look like the good old days, considering the latest infighting over the gavel. First, hardliners ousted McCarthy for moving to avert a government shutdown with an 11th-hour continuing resolution. Then, they nominated Majority Leader Steve Scalise—only for the Louisiana Republican to abruptly withdraw from consideration Thursday rather than subject himself to the humiliation of scrounging for 217 votes. “Our conference still has to come together,” Scalise said in stepping aside, “and it’s not there.”
Now, they’re all pissed at each other—and uncertain of where to go from here, all amid international crisis and the still-looming threat of a shutdown. “There is some deep distrust,” Republican Mark Alford told the New York Times of the disordered conference. “There’s some communication problems.”
“Some things,” he added, “are jacked up.”
That’s putting it mildly. Scalise was nominated earlier this week, which should have theoretically put him on track to assume the gavel. But the number two Republican not only failed to procure the 217 GOP votes he needed; he didn’t even have the 150 he thought he was starting with, as McCarthy told reporters Thursday. “It’s a big hill,” the ex-speaker told reporters. That was complicated by the fact that a significant chunk of the conference—along with former President Donald Trump, who essentially campaigned against Scalise on the basis that he is in treatment for cancer—preferred far-right flamethrower Jim Jordan.
The Ohio Republican outwardly seemed to be trying to make things easy on his colleague; he publicly backed Scalise and urged the conference to do the same. But the dealings between the two appear to be more complicated than that: In a meeting Wednesday, Jordan suggested he would back Scalise on the first ballot—but only if Scalise would back Jordan on a second ballot in the event that Scalise didn’t have the votes. Jordan spokesman Russell Dye told Axios the meeting with Scalise—whom he called a “great friend”—was “cordial.” But two GOP lawmakers recounted the interaction differently.
“America wants me!” Jordan told Scalise, according to one Republican. “I will nominate and vote for you in the first round and if you don’t win, you have to support me in second round,” he said, according to another, who said Jordan’s comments amounted to an “extortion” attempt. “He’s a fucking snake and disgraceful,” the second GOP lawmaker told Axios. “There’s zero chance Jim Jordan is speaker after the last 30 hours.” (Jordan already appears to have another challenger: Representative Austin Scott of Georgia.)
With Scalise staying put in his current job, and his backers bitter toward Jordan, it’s become increasingly unclear whether any Republican is capable of leading this chaotic conference—and some members have even expressed openness to cutting a bipartisan deal with Democrats to get the House back up and running. “At some point, we’re going to be exasperated [and say], ‘Okay, this is not working,” as Republican Congressman Don Bacon put it to Axios. But that may be a stretch, given the GOP’s extremism and some of its members’ frustration with the Democratic conference for refusing to save McCarthy from the wrath of his own members. “There was no sense of [bipartisanship] when it was the motion to vacate a week and a half ago,” Utah Republican Blake Moore told the outlet, “so I don’t think anything is credible that could be realistic at the moment.”
Indeed, at the moment, we just have a chamber that’s unable to govern, paralyzed by the competing interests and egos of its extremist majority—at a critical juncture for the country and its allies. “We are a ship,” Alford told reporters, “that doesn’t have a rudder right now.”