THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015
Kevin McCarthy?
We Thought You Meant “Charlie McCarthy”
This morning at The Conservative Agenda, while everybody was wondering if Republicans in Congress would finally be doing something about their so-called “leadership” following John Boehner’s abdication, Political Insiders were asking Beloved Whistleblower Publisher Charles Foster Kane what would happen if they couldn’t pick a new Speaker. But that was before Boehner’s and Obama’s choice Kevin McCarthy suddenly and without explanation withdrew from the race and the Elections for Speaker had to be postponed. If Boehner couldn’t get Kevin McCarthy to run, what about a dummy like Charlie McCarthy? He’s used to having somebody put words in his mouth.
“Today’s election was to go something like this,” Kane explained. “McCarthy was supposedly all but certain to win a “majority” of the 247 Republican House members, but he might not have gotten the 218 votes he needed at the end of the month to be elected speaker by the whole House. So with enough Conservative Republican members having vowed not to vote with their party’s pick, they could’ve denied McCarthy a win on the first ballot, and hopefully, forced the vote into chaos and allow other options – ranging from intriguing to absolutely batty – to come to the fore.
One such nutty notion would’ve been for the next Speaker NOT to be a member of the House, because The Constitution doesn’t require that the Speaker be an elected House Representative, although Speakers have always been an elected Member of Congress. Choosing the right Speaker has always been a BFD because that person is second in the United States presidential line of succession, after the Vice President.
Traditionally, Congress has adopted the following procedure (proposed by Thomas Jefferson). First, each party caucuses to select a candidate. Second, the entire House votes on the two nominees. Since House members invariably vote along party lines in these elections, the majority party candidate always wins. So the really important election would always be the nomination vote within the majority caucus.
But The Blower repeats: House rules do not require that a nominee be a member of Congress. So until the October 29 vote, speculating on “who else” the next Speaker of the House might be would at least give our Republicans in Congress something to do, since it’s not likely they’ll start doing what we elected them to do in 2014, anyway.
Do you think Newt would like to have his old job back?
