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It was roughly 48 hours ago when congressional Republicans, wrapping up a difficult, weeklong process, held a secret ballot election with the intention of choosing their new House speaker. The final tally was close: House Majority Leader Scalise finished with 113 votes (roughly 51% of the conference) to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s 99 votes (roughly 45% of the conference).
Under normal circumstances, this would’ve effectively ended the partisan process and led to a floor vote that culminated with the speaker’s gavel in the Louisiana congressman’s hands. This process, however, was anything but normal.
On the contrary, Scalise won his party’s nomination on Wednesday, only to withdraw a day later, unable to convince enough of his ostensible GOP allies to support his bid and adding a new chapter to an unprecedented story.
This necessitated another intraparty election — not to be confused with the intraparty election that led to Kevin McCarthy’s original ascension or the one that led to Scalise’s temporary ascension this week — which took place Friday afternoon on Capitol Hill. This time, instead of coming in second, Jordan finished first. NBC News reported:
Rep. Jim Jordan, of Ohio, became the second Republican nominated this week to be House speaker, besting Rep. Austin Scott in a closed-door vote.
NBC News confirmed that Jordan finished with 124 votes — a bit better than Scalise's total from Wednesday — while Scott finished with 81 votes.
At first blush, that might look like a decisive victory for the far-right Ohioan, but just below the surface, there's a problem: Jordan’s 124 votes (roughly 56% of the party’s 221-member conference) is woefully unimpressive.
The Judiciary Committee chairman’s opponent — I’m using the word loosely — was a relatively obscure member who did not campaign for the position, did not intend to seek the position, didn’t even announce his candidacy until minutes before the deadline, and publicly conceded that he didn’t actually want to be House speaker.
Or put another way, Jordan should’ve won this intraparty contest in a landslide. He didn’t. More than a third of the House Republican conference voted for his rival, who wasn’t trying.
What this suggested, of course, was that there are still quite a few GOP members who are not sold on Jordan’s bid for the gavel, his new nomination notwithstanding. Securing the votes for the Republican nomination and securing the votes to actually become speaker might ordinarily be the same thing, but not this year.
To remove any ambiguities, the House GOP conference then held a second vote — what was referred to as a "validation vote" — intended to gauge how many members were prepared to oppose Jordan's nomination on the floor.
Jordan again prevailed, but NBC News confirmed that the final tally was 152 to 55. In practical terms, the Republican Party's nominee for speaker can lose no more than four of his own members in order to succeed, and as of this afternoon, 55 GOP House members said they don't intend to support his candidacy.
What's more, Jordan would need 217 votes to win on the floor, and it now appears he's 65 votes short.
That's a lot.
With this in mind, there was no point in rushing the matter onto the House floor, and Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas confirmed to reporters that representatives were headed home for the weekend, with the hopes of a floor vote on Tuesday.
It's possible that Jordan and his allies will work the phones and flip several dozen votes between now and early next week. That's not likely, but it could happen. It's also possible his unimpressive showing will encourage others to launch bids of their own.
In the meantime, the chaotic melodrama that has gripped congressional Republican politics will continue — with nothing but uncertainty about when it might end.