A band of House Republicans made a historic move this week to punish their own leader, sending the House into chaos by ousting Kevin McCarthy as speaker. The unprecedented vote to oust McCarthy has only led to more turmoil in the days since as Republicans have grappled with the fallout of the speaker-less House.
On Thursday, former President Donald Trump was rumored to be going to Capitol Hill and floated the possibility of serving as speaker for a “short period of time” – a highly improbable idea. Then he abruptly changed course and scrapped those plans, endorsing Rep. Jim Jordan instead.
On Friday morning, a candidate forum on Fox News with Jordan and Majority Leader Steve Scalise was announced for Monday. By midday, furious backlash from GOP rank-and-file caused both to pull out from the event.
And McCarthy provided his own whipsaw Friday afternoon, when a flurry of reports emerged that he would resign after a new speaker was chosen. He quickly denied to reporters that he had any plans to leave before the end of his term.
House Republicans will return to Washington, DC, next week hopeful they can select a new speaker and turn the page on one of the most chaotic and unprecedented weeks in the history of the lower chamber. But there’s no indication Republicans are any closer to escaping the chaos and deep divisions that led to the historic ouster of McCarthy in the first place.
Over the past four days, Scalise and Jordan have racked up endorsements from their allies to try to position themselves as the consensus GOP candidate heading into next week’s secret ballot in the Republican conference to be the next speaker. Their efforts are running into the reality, however, that no matter who wins the conference vote, the next GOP speaker will need almost every Republican to coalesce around them in order to obtain the 217 votes on the floor required to…
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