House Republicans and the definition of insanity

Speaker Steve Scalise?

(The once and future Speakers?)

Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

A week removed from the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republicans appear to be on the verge of doing just that.

On Wednesday, in a closed door session, House Republicans chose Louisiana’s Steve Scalise over Ohio’s Jim Jordan as their nominee to be the next Speaker of the House.

Soon after the vote, the House went into recess — a sign that Scalise did not, at least as of that moment, have the 218 GOP votes he needed to become Speaker.

Sound familiar? It should because this is exactly the problem that McCarthy faced earlier this year when it took 15 ballots for him to win the speakership — a process that laid bare the fractures and fissures within the House GOP.

“It’s a big hill,” McCarthy said Thursday of Scalise’s path to 218. “He told a lot of people he was going to be at 150 [votes]. He wasn’t there.” (Scalise beat out Jordan 113-99.)

Take a minute and realize what is happening here. McCarthy is clearly aiming to undermine Scalise — a move due, at least in part, to their long-fraught relationship and McCarthy’s view that Scalise moved too quickly to run for Speaker after he had been voted out.

But, McCarthy’s personal agenda aside, he’s not wrong!

Remember that because of the extremely narrow GOP majority, Scalise — or any other candidate for Speaker — can only afford to lose 4 Republican votes. Right now, those publicly against Scalise are (at least) three times that number.

This, from CNN’s Haley Talbot, is helpful, on that front:

What Scalise has to hope is that some of those “no’s” are soft — that is, that they might vote against him once or twice but eventually can be won over.

But, early indications suggest that might not be the case.

Here’s South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace’s explanation for why she won’t be for Scalise: “I personally cannot, in good conscious, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke.”

Whoa boy. (Scalise had acknowledged that while in the Louisiana state legislature, he spoke to the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a group founded by KKK leader David Duke.)

Then there was this from Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene:

I like Steve Scalise, and I like him so much that I want to see him defeat cancer more than sacrifice his health in the most difficult position in Congress.

(Scalise revealed in August that he has a form of blood cancer.)

And this from Pennsylvania Rep. Lloyd Smucker:

The House GOP Conference is broken. So we oust Kevin McCarthy and all other leaders are rewarded with promotions? How does that make sense or change anything? We need to chart a different path forward.

None of those statements leave much wiggle room. And, again, if Scalise loses just FOUR Republicans, he can’t be elected Speaker.

Adding to the dark cloud that has begun to move over Scalise’s potential speakership is this report, from Fox News congressional reporter Chad Pergram:

Fox is told this will intensify an effort to empower Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry (R-NC) – although that is WILDLY controversial. The House could always vote to ELECT McHenry as Speaker Pro Tempore. But honestly, this is uncharted territory.

That there is already a break-glass-on-case-of-emergency plan in place should Scalise falter is, um, not a good thing for Steve Scalise’s ambitions of winding up as Speaker.

It’s easy to blame this all on Scalise. But, to do that would miss the point.

The issue here is that the current version of the Republican party in the House is ungovernable. And some within their conference like it that way!

There are too many factions — each with their own interests. Individual members — and their #brands — are empowered to seek publicity, not consensus. There isn’t a BIG figure who is respected in all quarters — ala Paul Ryan a decade ago — who can unite the party.

So, this isn’t a Scalise problem. Or a McCarthy problem. Or a Jim Jordan problem. It is a House Republicans’ problem. And simply changing out the names — as Republicans are in the process of doing right now — isn’t going to change that underlying fact.