Republicans Weigh Whether to Carry Latest House Speaker Nominee to Term or Abort
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) barely won the nomination at 1 p.m. after 5 rounds of voting. By 3 p.m., reports surfaced that his bid was "on the verge of collapse."
Politics

After five rounds of blind voting on Tuesday that felt like an episode of the nastiest reality TV show on daytime television, House Republicans narrowly selected Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) as their nominee for Speaker. We’re coming up on three long weeks without a Speaker and thus three long weeks of total impotency in the House. And I regret to inform you that we’ve still got a long way to go before this thing’s over—if it ever is.
By Monday, nine different House Republicans had tossed their white, male, sexagenarian hats in the ring, and bright and early Tuesday morning, we were down to just eight (Mitt Romney lookalike Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) dropped out during Monday night’s candidate forum). Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) withdrew his candidacy early Tuesday, and from there, candidates continued to fall like flies with each ballot vote, which saw the person with the least votes eliminated. Down to Reps. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Emmer, Donalds backed out ahead of the fifth ballot, which set up a two-man race between Emmer and Johnson—with Emmer finally receiving the 109 majority (of 221 House Republicans) necessary to become nominee.
To become Speaker, the nominee can’t lose more than four votes from the rest of the caucus. Yet, comically enough, throughout the five ballots Tuesday morning, a handful of Republicans repeatedly voted for non-nominees or “present.”
Punchbowl News reports that Emmer’s camp was confident he’d win the party nomination within two to three votes, and it’s only gone rougher from there. In a roll call vote, 26 members didn’t vote for Emmer—mind you, that’s more holdouts than Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) had last week. Most of these 26, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and far-right members of the House Freedom Caucus, voted for Jordan at the roll call. Shortly after the roll call vote around 1 p.m., Emmer reportedly declared that they should stay in the room until he can get to 217, which honestly sounds like a hostage situation.