Rep. Steve Scalise (La.) came out on top as House Republicans met Wednesday to pick their nominee for Speaker. The conference was closely divided between the House majority leader from Louisiana and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Indeed the final vote was close a win by 14 votes. But a messy floor…
enenthusiasm about how good you all thought this deal was in order to give speaker mccarthy some cover and allow republicans to frame it as a win. when you see 76% of the house democratic caucus vote for a budget deal, 70% of republican conference vote for a budget deal you do - -
elements. and we succeeded. it was a reasonable bipartisan agreement, you would expect to see in divided government. i m done this a long time. and we have to talk about the budget at some point this year. and this is about what you would expect to see out of a budget agreement with divided congress. just one more question on this. what the congressman was very clearly suggesting is that democrats intentionally downplayed enthusiasm about how good you all thought this deal was in order to give speaker mccarthy some cover and allow republicans to frame it as a win. look, i ll say, when you see 76% of the house democratic caucus vote for a budget deal, 70% of republican conference vote for a budget deal, you do leave thinking you spent the last month of your life doing some something that was middle ground in this town ab it is necessary.
i think that s really the substance of the conversations with gaetz again, we re in a position once more where every single republican conference vote counts it s the same as it was during the speaker battle many of the names that we re saying here are the same names that we said then and will continue saying over the course of this debate because they were always the ones to watch i think it s striking that we re not actively following key freedom caucus members like chip roy, like scott perry. they re quiet on this one. seems like leadership was able to get through to them with the reality of what s possible here within the larger scope of the gop conference but there were still some key holdouts that leadership is trying to get ahold of to symone s point, though, about democrats, just in the last minute before i got on with you, i had one democratic member come by me sort of elbowing me, do they have the votes on the republican side and saying, you know, you never check in with demo
are two different votes out here. there s a vote that s a conference vote. which kevin mccarthy has never gotten less than 85% of a conference vote. and then there s the floor vote. that is going to determine who the house, who the speaker of the house is. but what kevin s going to have to worry about, more than the vote in conference and on the floor is how he s going to be able to govern with such a small majority, and you ve got some detractors. that s going to be the biggest test, but there isn t anyone better poised in this particular situation to lead, to be speaker of the house. at that point, do you believe mccarthy can control his caucus if, in fact, he does win? i m reminded, rereading a friend s book, robert draper, new york times reporter talking about the congress that came in after the 2010 elections where one member of congress now out of office labrador said in