that happen in the past where the primary reason john boehner retired, he was forced into the position because he couldn t get the, you know, his right flank to support spending bills, and he had to pass them, so he ended up having to get some democrats to support them. you know, that could happen again. i worry about a lot of things, and that s one of them. but the interesting thing, though, jake, i think by having these some of these freedom caucus individuals on the rules committee, for example, which actually sets out the rules of how bills will be brought and amended on the floor, it actually helps that process once we get there because they will have been involved with it, rather than one of their primary objections they feel like these bills come to the floor and we have no input to them and then we re forced to support something we have not been able to influence in any way. i think that s going to minimize that. that s kevin s intention and one that i support. let s bring in
given up a lot of money $75 billion. $75 billion in defense spending. how do they live with that? the thing with that, i will say it s not entirely up to them. funding our defense department is a whole government, whole of government enterprise, that also involves republicans in the senate that is still not quite as far gone as the house of representatives. i do think there s some questions about, you know, we ll see if these hardliners really actually won concessions that they think they did. i also think it bears repeating today is january 6th and we watched earlier the president have that ceremony where he gave honors to people who defended democracy and maybe by the end of the day on january 6th, kevin mccarthy will be speaker, but it was two years ago that some of these holdouts helped stage a coup, a violent coup, that almost took down this country. if he becomes speaker on the anniversary of the january 6th
this, in the sense you have to give people an off ramp, give them a way to save face and not humiliate them. i think a couple of them, maybe even more, are actually at the point where they ll say yes. i think that i can support kevin. as you said, though, jake there may be another option and that is maybe they just don t vote or they vote present. either way, i think we re going to get there. the couple you re referring to is it crane and rosendale, that s what we ve been told is the focus of mccarthy s campaign? i don t want to characterize for them. it would be awkward for them and awkward for me and allow them to speak for themselves. it could be there s others as well who are actually closer than some people think. oh. interesting. the big question among some republicans who have been with mccarthy from the beginning are has he given away too many concessions that would set the stage for a rather chaotic
and under paul ryan and it s going to be true under kevin mccarthy. the question you have though, jake, have we weakened the speakership to the point where what is an already difficult job is impossible and that s something many of us have worried about. i don t think that we have. honestly, take the one thing that people focused on or at least one of the things, is the motion to vacate the chair. whether that s one individual or five, in a practical way, it hardly matters. if there s one person that feels that way, there s almost certainly five. for kevin to say i won t have five required, we ll go down to one, it was a bit of a concession, but probable doesn t make much difference. the important considerations are, does everyone in the conference feel like we were all treated fairly or do they feel like maybe some of these holdouts were treated with preference and that s the one thing that kevin has had had to be very careful of and hasn t stepped over that line. if he would have ste
likely, but i don t think it s the end of the world if we don t. it may be we have to have one more round tomorrow. according to our math, assuming that buck and hunt get back here tonight, and that mccarthy holds the 214 votes he just got on the 13th ballot, he ll only need to pick up two more, or there are other ways it can be done with trying to get some of these rebels, these holdouts, to vote present, which would bring down the margin. you think that one of those things is going to happen tonight? yeah. i do. of course i hope that they ll all vote for kevin. it would be wonderful for the party and wonderful for unity within the congress, if all of them voted for kevin. look, some of these guys are actually good friends of mine, people that i respect, and some of them were advocating for rules changes and some other structural changes that almost all of us agreed with and we were glad to have that conversation. but i think we re talking to them now about something that s more t