Or ten of them voting “present.” Every “present” vote lowers the threshold for Speaker. After 10 votes for “present,” Jeffries would reach the threshold. This way, the Republicans could insist that they were just protesting their conference being unable to get it together and they totally didn’t want to elect Jeffries (aka plausible deniability).
If anything, the Republicans would benefit from the Democrats being in charge. Why can’t they pass any conservative bills? The Democrats are in charge. Why does X problem exist? The Democrats are in charge (even if that’s not the real reason). No matter how well the Democrats did, the Republicans would claim it wasn’t good enough and they’d do better - without giving specifics. This is their ideal situation, not actually being in charge.
I can’t imagine a scenario in which that doesn’t end up with them losing their seats. If they’re in a competitive district, they’re not going to pick up a lot of independents, and their campaign funds from the party will dry up. If they’re in a deep red district, they probably get primaried out from the right.
And then we have a democratic Speaker in a house with a Republican majority, who doesn’t have a coalition that agrees on much, and could easily turn on him like we saw with McCarthy.
If only that was viable. It’s going to be a wild next 13 months.
All it would take is like 4 or 5 Rs going “You know what, fuck this shit” lmao
Or ten of them voting “present.” Every “present” vote lowers the threshold for Speaker. After 10 votes for “present,” Jeffries would reach the threshold. This way, the Republicans could insist that they were just protesting their conference being unable to get it together and they totally didn’t want to elect Jeffries (aka plausible deniability).
If anything, the Republicans would benefit from the Democrats being in charge. Why can’t they pass any conservative bills? The Democrats are in charge. Why does X problem exist? The Democrats are in charge (even if that’s not the real reason). No matter how well the Democrats did, the Republicans would claim it wasn’t good enough and they’d do better - without giving specifics. This is their ideal situation, not actually being in charge.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them didn’t even know that was a thing.
I can’t imagine a scenario in which that doesn’t end up with them losing their seats. If they’re in a competitive district, they’re not going to pick up a lot of independents, and their campaign funds from the party will dry up. If they’re in a deep red district, they probably get primaried out from the right.
And then we have a democratic Speaker in a house with a Republican majority, who doesn’t have a coalition that agrees on much, and could easily turn on him like we saw with McCarthy.
If only that was viable. It’s going to be a wild next 13 months.