procedure. roger williams wife had a stroke. all these people were lured back into this chaos by these people who committed this treachery. not a single shred of care for human decency. and that is the perspective. that s the right thing to bring up right now because ideally all this public service is about to be something bigger than yourself and your personal whim and collection of resentments. that s not where politics is today. kevin mccarthy has tried to triangulate his way to the speakership. he came close on that 14th ballot. as much as i love historic parallels i want to keep us focused on the moment. what we saw is historic. we ve never seen that kind of cajoling. we haven t seen a speaker fight like this since 1855, since before the civil war. but we got to see in realtime the arm twisting, the betrayal, the treachery. that s an unbelievable display
on certain roll call votes, a legendary roll call vote just before thanksgiving back in 2003, went for almost three hours started on a saturday morning at 3:00 in the morning and they were working, the democrats were trying to get a bill passed, the republicans were working on a medicare related bill and there was one member, david woo at the time, a democrat from oregon, who would not vote. he just sat there. and there was a similar campaign of members around him. i ve seen this play out on the house floor before. so i ve never seen it play out for speaker, of course we haven t been in this posture since 1923, maybe more specifically 1859 when they went to 44 votes. of course the record was 133 roll call votes in 1855 and it bled into 1856 because it took them two months to figure it out before they voted for nathaniel banks we re not dwight there but if they don t get this worked out it will go to a 15th vote. so we might sit in this cry 0
0 now they re going through the scraps, the people that missed their vote. these are the key votes, and matt gaetz is the keyest of them all. let s listen in. gaetz. present. present. he voted present. that will not be enough to deliver the speakership to kevin mccarthy. kevin mccarthy needed matt gaetz to vote yes. they needed present votes don t hurt. it s at least a nod in the right direction, but they needed three of the holdouts to vote present not two. let s listen in. gosar voted for mccarthy as well as we expected. mccarthy. graves of louisiana, m ccarthy. jeffries. david scott, jeffries. kevin mccarthy walks off the he does not look happy. kevin mccarthy walks off the floor i m sorry, walks up the floor rather. matt gaetz, he needed him to vote yes not present. he s trying to convince him. he appears to be trying to convince matt gaetz to vote yes and not present. also, right, if he could get lauren boebert to change from present we haven t seen
different things. firstly, the red wave that was so widely predicted ultimately did not materialise during the mid term elections, resulting in is very narrow majority, and with that, it seems that republican leader kevin mccarthy seems to have been complacent, really, as far as negotiating for this role, and he has had since the first week of november to get this done, the fact that it has come down to now multiple votes, the most since 1855. it is embarrassing. it is amateur hour. so now we are left with this scenario, this impasse, where it remains unclear if there really is for him due to there really is for him due to the opposition he has from the 20 or so members. i5 the opposition he has from the 20 or so members. 20 or so members. is there anything 20 or so members. is there anything mr 20 or so members. is there anything mr macarthur - 20 or so members. is there anything mr macarthur can | 20 or so members. is there i anything mr macarthur can do 20 or so members. is ther
nope. that comes of course from congressman lauren boebert that we don t want you a total of 11 times this week. this, frankly, is nothing like any of us have seen at least in our lifetimes. we may have heard about it, we may have read about to knowing it could happen, but this is the longest speaker contest in 164 years. now, i don t want to scare you all the way, but back in 1855 the contest for speaker at that time it went for 133 ballots. so right now we are in the small potatoes category of all of this. but here we are tonight, 11 votes, and there is still not a speaker of the house. and this frankly, all of this dysfunction, this what s known as an embarrassing display by so many who who are talking about what s happening on capitol hill right now, this seemingly complete inability to get the job done or even be able to move past this particular hurdle and