Highlights: After Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) fell short of the votes he needed on the House floor a third time, House Republicans voted to ditch Jordan as their party’s speaker nominee. Jordan lost the closed-door secret ballot vote 112 to 86.
The tremendously difficult challenge is that just one GOP candidate somehow needs to unite nearly all members of both camps, even though they have seemingly irreconcilable demands.
With such long-established, high-profile Republicans falling flat, several much less well-known members of Congress will now try their luck. Reps. Kevin Hern (R-OK), Jack Bergman (R-MI), Austin Scott (R-GA), Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared their candidacies Friday afternoon after the GOP voted to drop Jordan.
The GOP’s new speaker candidates have little national profile. But perhaps it will take someone who is less firmly associated with either the existing leadership or the hardline-right faction to unite the GOP — someone who can make nice-sounding promises to both sides.
It’s interesting to note that 4 out of the 5 people that were brought up as candidates for Speaker are traitors. Each of them voted to overturn the election results on January 6th.
The one who didn’t, Austin Scott, actually signed his name to a letter to Congressional leadership stating that Congress doesn’t have the authority to object to the EC votes absent an investigation by one or more states into the validity of their slate of electors. He also attended Biden’s inauguration, and is on record condemning the violence of the Jan 6th protestors. So… there’s probably no way the majority of the Republicans will ever vote for him.
That being said, he is incredibly racist. So there’s a chance.