back to disfunction.....vote in 50 mins
The vote planned for Friday morning will cap a tumultuous 24 hours for House Republicans, who spent Thursday fighting among themselves in closed-door meetings, trading blame and insults, and casting about for a way forward as they failed again to coalesce around a speaker candidate. By Thursday evening, Mr. Jordan appeared no closer to winning the post.
“He needed to know there is no way forward for his speakership,” Representative John Rutherford of Florida, one of the holdouts, told reporters after meeting with Mr. Jordan.Earlier Thursday, in the face of unyielding opposition, Mr. Jordan proposed to hit pause on his candidacy and support a plan being floated by centrist lawmakers in both parties that would temporarily give the interim speaker, Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina,
explicit power to conduct legislative business.
That proposal met with furious backlash from rank-and-file Republicans, including many of Mr. Jordan’s far-right supporters, who said empowering Mr. McHenry — a stand-in appointed to his post after the ouster of Mr. McCarthy — would effectively cede control of the House floor to Democrats and set a bad precedent.
“It’s a giant mistake to give the Democrats control of a Republican majority,” said Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, who backs Mr. Jordan. He added: “What they’re doing right now is walking the Republicans off the plank. We don’t deserve the majority if we go along with a plan to give the Democrats control over the House of Representatives. It’s a giant betrayal to Republicans.”
Within hours, Mr. Jordan reversed course again and said he would move forward with his bid to try to win the post quickly.
“We made the pitch to members on the resolution as the way to lower the temperature and get back to work,” Mr. Jordan said on Thursday. “We decided that wasn’t where we were going to go. I’m still running for speaker. I plan to go to the floor and get the votes and win this race.”
