金发姑娘试了三次才找到“刚刚好”的粥。但在周四，众议院共和党人对第三次众议院议长投票是否符合他们的口味犹豫不决。最初，一些共和党人倾向于一项潜在的计划，即正式授权代理议长帕特里克·麦克亨利在一段时间内领导众议院。但是那项提议遭到强烈反对，包括来自党内的一些领导。随着东部时间周四晚上7点30分事件的快速发展，众议院最早可能在周五早上第三次投票选举议长。
这些最新的进展发生在众议院本周两次未能选出议长之后，原因是一小群背叛的共和党人促成了议长凯文·麦卡锡的下台10月3日。共和党正式提名的俄亥俄州众议员吉姆·乔丹(Jim Jordan)在周三的第二轮投票中落后18票，比周二的第一轮投票差一票。仅在2023年，众议院就在1月份经过15次投票选举麦卡锡后，在17次尝试中成功选出了一位议长。
共和党大会内部正在进行的争斗有许多根源。与麦卡锡不同，乔丹的观点坐在右边这使得他巩固支持的努力变得复杂。更广泛地说，共和党仅占微弱多数，这意味着任何党内分歧都会被放大，因为少数顽固分子可以轻易地让事情陷入停顿。这些情况与近年来影响国会党内团结的更大力量结合在一起，导致了瘫痪。
我们在一月份看到了这是如何工作的当时，一群反体制的保守派几乎停止了麦卡锡的选举。然后在本周，约旦面临总共20名抵制者——在两次投票中每一次都有20名左右——和投票反对麦卡锡的人数差不多。虽然赋予麦克亨利权力的提议可能会发生，但阻碍议长选举的同样力量也可能阻碍共和党人将麦克亨利视为引路人(或就此而言，寻求选举任何其他议长)。
到目前为止，众议院共和党的分歧是如何阻止约旦议长的
从两次投票的投票情况来看，乔丹似乎离胜利并不遥远。他需要217票才能在拥有433个席位的众议院获胜，共和党在众议院拥有9个席位的微弱优势(还有两个空缺)，他在第一轮投票中获得了200票，在第二轮投票中获得了199票。如果乔丹更接近胜利，他甚至可以从一些共和党人投票“出席”中受益，这降低了获胜所需的票数，因为多数阈值基于的总票数命名的候选人。但是当他接近不到17票时，战略考虑——这帮助麦卡锡在一月份获胜—从没出现过。
乔丹一直达不到获胜所需的217票
众议院议长投票，10月17-18日
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217 | 200 | 20 | 1 | 212 |
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217 | 199 | 22 | 0 | 212 |
来源:美国众议院书记官
事实证明，麦卡锡下台后共和党内部议长提名投票预示着乔丹的麻烦。在10月11日的第一次共和党会议投票中，众议院多数党领袖史蒂夫·斯卡利斯险胜约旦113到99，但是斯卡利斯退出了考虑一天后，面对反对他参选的声音。10月13日，约旦赢得了共和党议长的点头，但他的胜利远远不是压倒性的:乔丹以124比81击败了佐治亚州众议员奥斯汀·斯科特，但斯科特只有在投票前加入了议长竞选为约旦提供正式比赛。
这些无记名投票标志着过去三十年来最分裂的党内会议议长投票，仅次于南希佩洛西的支持2016年大选后，民主党党团成员略多于三分之二保持民主党领袖的地位。在赢得共和党议长提名后，乔丹要求进行另一次无记名投票，以测试他的潜在发言权支持，其中55名共和党人表示他们不会支持他。在随后的议会投票中，虽然没有多少人公开表示反对，但足以阻止他赢得议长职位，至少截至周四。
从更广泛的角度来看众议院共和党人，麦卡锡和乔丹在相隔九个月的议长选举中所面临的反对阵营基本上是彼此意识形态的对立面，其基础是DW-提名，这是一个政治科学工具，根据成员的投票记录来衡量他们的观点。(DW-NOMINATE的第一个维度描述了成员的相对自由主义或保守主义，并且，在我们当前的时代，第二个维度在某种程度上揭示了成员与他们的政党的关系有多密切。)的20名投票反对麦卡锡的共和党人至少有一次回到一月份，大多数人坐在党内最保守和反建制的角落，而乔丹的对手主要来自党内更温和和更建制的部分。
在至少一次投票反对乔丹的24名共和党人中，只有4人的观点比众议院共和党人的中间值更保守。有些相似的是，这24人中只有8人的反建制记录比中间成员多。相比之下，一月份至少投票反对麦卡锡一次的20名共和党人都是最保守的和大多数反建制的党员占该党的三分之一。
然而，在乔丹的反对者中有一个明显的异类:科罗拉多州众议员肯·巴克。他是非常保守和反建制的众议院自由会议的45名左右代表中唯一投票反对约旦的成员共同创立了HFC。这使得巴克成为唯一一个在1月份投票支持麦卡锡，但在10月份反对乔丹的HFC成员(大约26名成员投票支持麦卡锡和乔丹;HFC不公布其成员名单)。巴克，在意识形态上与他相近的共和党人中很不寻常反对提拔一个拒绝选举的人做议长，因为约旦投票推翻了2020年的选举结果。
占据更多竞争地盘的共和党人也更有可能投票反对乔丹。最值得注意的是，在18名代表拜登总统在2020年可能获得的席位的共和党人中，有6人投票给了其他人。其中一半是纽约议员:众议员安东尼·德·埃斯波西托(拜登以近15个百分点的优势赢得席位)、迈克·劳勒(拜登+10)和尼克·拉洛塔(拜登不到1个百分点)。第四个投票反对乔丹的纽约人是众议员安德鲁·加尔巴里诺(Andrew Garbarino)，他的席位是前总统特朗普的大约2个百分点。
现在，一些共和党人也至少一次投票反对乔丹。总体而言，特朗普将至少领先15个百分点的席位中的11名共和党人投票给了乔丹以外的人，但这些叛逃者主要是以建制派为导向的共和党人谁表示沮丧反对驱逐麦卡锡的共和党人，以及斯卡利斯在党内提名后的表现。很明显，这11个成员中的5个支持斯卡利斯在10月11日第一次共和党大会议长提名投票之前，佛罗里达州众议员马里奥·迪亚兹-巴拉特、得克萨斯州众议员杰克·埃尔泽、佐治亚州众议员德鲁·弗格森、宾夕法尼亚州众议员迈克·凯利和阿肯色州众议员史蒂夫·沃马克。在投票过程中，他们中的大多数人投票给了斯卡利斯，尽管凯利在众议院引起了一些笑声当他投票给前众议院议长约翰·博纳时在第二轮投票中。
在最近的议长僵局中起作用的更大的力量
在1月和10月的议长投票中，由于共和党占微弱多数，麦卡锡和乔丹只能承受少量背叛。说服大约20个顽固分子对麦卡锡来说是一个巨大的挑战，对乔丹来说可能是不可能的。至少，两次议长竞选中相当大的反对促使了多次投票，这在今年之前自1923年以来从未发生过。事实上，目前的僵局只是第八次自1839年以来的多分配议长选举当众议院从秘密投票转向录音语音投票选举议长时。这是第一次在同一个国会里发生两次。
这是自19世纪30年代以来的第八次多分配议长投票
自1839年开始公开选举议长以来，众议院议长选举涉及一次以上的投票
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*众议院尚未选出永久议长
在第26届国会(1839-1841)之前，众议院通过无记名投票选举了议长。
来源:美国众议院
当然，要达到内战前一些国会选举议长所需的惊人票数，我们还有很长的路要走。多分配议长选举变得极为罕见，部分原因是，自那时以来，政党已将党内核心会议(或会议共和党称之为)作为党内斗争的指定场所;一旦分歧得到解决，该党将(大部分)团结一致。即使在分歧很小的国会一个新的多数党刚刚掌权，领导权在党内核心会议上激烈争夺，比如第五十一届国会(1889-1891年)，多数党成员基本上坚持与他们的政党提名人在地板上，直到20世纪90年代末。
但是在过去25年左右的时间里系统变得不太可靠随着成员们越来越愿意投票反对该党提名人在公共场所。党的纪律的下降有许多父亲，包括委员会权力的削弱和党的领导权的增强这使得演讲者成为党内挫败的更大目标。其他因素包括更大范围的筹款渠道自最高法院2010年裁决以来公民联盟诉联邦选举委员会。除此之外，还有基于互联网的媒体环境可以用来建立自己的追随者哗众取宠——许多人都有这样的描述适用于佛罗里达州众议员马特盖兹的行动一手促成麦卡锡下台。
共和党人可能比民主党人更难以面对这一新的现实。这可能是因为共和党对政府行为有更大的怀疑，这使得共和党人更怀疑自己的领导能力，也更愿意接受立法不作为。诚然，近年来，占多数的民主党人已经看到了他们自己的一些重大变节。2019年，15名民主党人与佩洛西决裂在议长的单独投票中，但该党拥有比共和党目前享有的更多的多数席位。然而在2021年，民主党再次成功再次选举佩洛西为议长尽管她过去的困难和与共和党目前优势相似的微弱多数(她表示她打算辞职的信号当然，在那之后，国会可能为她的连任铺平了道路。但在2023年，党的纪律性减弱、共和党派系斗争和极微弱的多数的长期趋势为历史上艰难的议长竞选创造了完美的风暴，甚至史无前例地驱逐了现任议长。
错误的开始和不确定的下一步
面对共和党目前的困境，一些众议院共和党人提议一个不寻常的匝道:正式授权代理议长麦克亨利在未来几个月领导众议院，以便它可以开展立法工作。就在周四上午共和党大会召开之前，乔丹宣布他支持临时提案这似乎是一个信号，表明他暂时不会寻求第三位议长的投票。从理论上讲，此举会给约旦时间来支撑未来议长投票的内部支持，因为他会保持该党的议长提名在麦克亨利的临时任期内。但更广泛地说，一些众议院共和党人观察这种方法作为走出困境的唯一途径。
然而，该提议在周四的会议上遭到反对，其未来前景仍不明朗。一些强硬派成员表达了尖锐的反对德州众议员奇普·罗伊声称共和党人如果他们实施的话，“还不如辉格党呢”——指的是内战前的主要政党，在19世纪50年代分崩离析。政党领导人在临时计划上也有分歧。一边是斯卡利斯，多数党党鞭汤姆·艾默和会议主席Elise Stefanik反对它的理由是，它可能会危及与民主党人的联盟式安排，如果授权麦克亨利的决议获得通过，民主党人可能必须予以协助。但是乔丹和仍然有影响力的麦卡锡，两人都发言赞成这项提议.
聚会结束后，乔丹说会有第三次投票，这是可能发生的星期五早上。然而，共和党内部关于如何推进的激烈分歧可能会继续下去，因为乔丹的会议他的党内对手似乎进展不顺利。在微弱多数和党内团结减少的情况下，让众议院共和党人走到这一步的挑战不会消失。这意味着，当众议院再次试图永久选举议长时，他们可能会发现自己又陷入了另一个僵局。
How House Republicans failed to elect a speaker
It took Goldilocks three tries to find the porridge that was “just right.” But on Thursday, House Republicans vacillated on whether a third House speaker vote would be to their taste. Initially, some Republicans moved toward a potential plan to formally empower acting Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry to lead the House for a period of time. Butthat proposal met fierce opposition, including from some in the party leadership. With events moving quickly as of 7:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, the House could still end up voting a third time for speaker as soon as Friday morning.
These latest developments came after the House twice failed to elect a speaker this week after a small group of renegade Republicansprecipitated the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthyon Oct. 3. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the official GOP speaker nominee, fell 18 votes short of a majority on the second ballot on Wednesday, one vote worse than on the first ballot on Tuesday. In 2023 alone, the House has now successfully elected a speaker once in 17 tries after it took the body 15 ballots to elect McCarthy in January.
The ongoing strife within the Republican conference has many origins. Unlike McCarthy, Jordan’s viewssit well to the rightof those of the average House Republican, which complicated his efforts to consolidate support. More broadly, Republicans hold only a narrow majority, which means any intraparty disagreement is magnified because a few holdouts can easily grind things to a halt. These circumstances combined with larger forces that have in recent years affected party unity in Congress to produce paralysis.
We saw how this worked in January, when a group of anti-establishment conservatives nearly halted McCarthy’s election. Then this week, Jordan faced a total number of holdouts — around 20 on each of two ballots —similar in size to the group who voted against McCarthy. And while the proposal to empower McHenry may happen, the same forces that hindered speaker elections could also impede Republicans looking to McHenry as an off-ramp (or looking to elect any other speaker, for that matter).
How House GOP divisions have so far blocked a Jordan speakership
Looking at the voting breakdown across both ballots, Jordan may not have seemed that far away from victory. He needed 217 votes to win in the 433-member House, where Republicans hold a narrow nine-seat advantage (with two vacancies), and he received 200 votes on his first ballot and 199 on his second. If Jordan had been closer to the winning mark, he could’ve even benefited from a few Republicans voting “present,” which lowers the number of votes needed to win becausethe majority threshold is based onthe total votes fornamedcandidates. But as he came no closer than 17 votes, that strategic consideration — whichhelped McCarthy win in January— never came into play.
Jordan consistently fell short of the 217 votes he needed to win
Balloting for speaker of the House, Oct. 17-18
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217 | 200 | 20 | 1 | 212 |
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217 | 199 | 22 | 0 | 212 |
SOURCE: CLERK OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
As it turned out, Republicans’ internal speaker nomination vote following McCarthy’s ouster portended Jordan’s troubles. In the first GOP conference vote on Oct. 11, House Majority Leader Steve Scalisenarrowly defeated Jordan113 to 99, butScalise withdrew from considerationa day later in the face of opposition to his candidacy. On Oct. 13, Jordanwon the GOP speaker nod, but his victory was far from overwhelming: Jordan bested Georgia Rep. Austin Scott 124 to 81, but Scott had onlyentered the speaker race just before the voteto provide official competition to Jordan.
These secret-ballot votes marked the most divisive party caucus balloting for speaker over the past three decades, rivaled only by Nancy Pelosi’s support fromjust over two-thirds of the Democratic caucus after the 2016 electionto remain Democratic leader. After he won the GOP speaker nomination, Jordan asked for another secret-ballot vote to test his potential floor support, in which 55 Republicans said they wouldn’t support him. Not nearly that many voiced their opposition publicly in the ensuing floor votes, but enough did to stop him from winning the speakership, at least as of Thursday.
Looking more broadly at House Republicans, the blocs of opposition that McCarthy and Jordan faced in speaker elections nine months apart are roughly the ideological inverse of each other, based onDW-NOMINATE, a political science tool that measures members' views based on their voting records. (DW-NOMINATE’s first dimension describes members’ relative liberalism or conservatism, and, in our current era,the second dimension reveals to some extenthow closely aligned members are with their party’s establishment.) The20 Republicans who voted against McCarthyat least once back in January mostly sit in the most conservative and anti-establishment corner of the party, whereas Jordan’s opponents primarily come from the more moderate and more establishment section of the party.
Of the 24 Republicans who voted against Jordan at least once, just four hold more conservative views than the median House Republican. Somewhat similarly, just eight of those 24 had more anti-establishment records than the median member. By comparison, the 20 Republicans who voted against McCarthy at least once in January all rank among the most conservativeandmost anti-establishment third of the party’s membership.
Still, there was one clear outlier among the Jordan opponents: Colorado Rep. Ken Buck. He was the only member of the 45 or so representatives in the very conservative and anti-establishment House Freedom Caucus to vote against Jordan, whoco-founded the HFC. This made Buck the lone HFC member to vote for McCarthy in January but against Jordan in October (26 or so members voted for both McCarthy and Jordan; the HFC does not publicize its membership list). Unusual among Republicans in his ideological vicinity, Buckopposed promoting an election denier to the speakership, as Jordan voted to overturn the 2020 election results.
Republicans who occupy more competitive turf were also somewhat more likely to vote against Jordan. Most notably, of the 18 Republicans representing seats that President Biden would have carried in 2020, six voted for someone else. Half of those were New York members: Reps. Anthony D’Esposito (Biden won his seat by nearly 15 points), Mike Lawler (Biden +10) and Nick LaLota (Biden by less than 1 point). A fourth New Yorker who voted against Jordan, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, holds a seat former President Trump would’ve won by roughly 2 points.
Now, some Republicans on redder turf also voted against Jordan at least once. Overall, 11 Republicans in seats that Trump would’ve carried by at least 15 points cast a ballot for someone besides Jordan, but those defectors were predominantly establishment-oriented Republicanswho expressed frustrationwith the insurgent-minded Republicans who ousted McCarthy and with how Scalise fared after the party nominated him. Tellingly, five of these 11 membershad endorsed Scaliseahead of the first Republican conference speaker nomination vote on Oct. 11: Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, Jake Ellzey of Texas, Drew Ferguson of Georgia, Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania and Steve Womack of Arkansas. Most of them voted for Scalise during the balloting, although Kelly prompted some laughs on the House floorwhen he voted for former House Speaker John Boehneron the second ballot.
The larger forces at play in the latest speaker impasse
In both the January and October speaker votes, McCarthy and Jordan could only afford a small number of defections because of the GOP’s slender majority. Convincing around 20 holdouts was a huge challenge for McCarthy, and could prove impossible for Jordan. At the very least, sizable opposition in both speaker fights prompted multiple ballots, which before this year had not happened since 1923. In fact, the current impasse marks just the eighthmultiballot speaker election since 1839, when the House moved from casting secret ballots to recorded voice votes to elect a speaker. And it’s the first time this has happened twice during the same Congress.
This is the eighth multiballot speaker vote since the 1830s
Speaker of the House elections that involved more than one ballot of voting since the start of public balloting for speaker in 1839
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*The House has not yet elected a permanent speaker
Prior to the 26th Congress (1839-1841), the House of Representatives elected its speaker by secret ballot.
SOURCES: U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Of course, we’re a long way from reaching the incredible number of ballots some Congresses needed to elect a speaker before the Civil War. Multiballot speaker elections became exceedingly rare in part because, since then, the parties have positioned the party caucus (or conference, as the GOP calls it)as the designated site for intraparty fights; once disagreements were ironed out,the party would go to the floor (mostly) united. Even inclosely divided Congresseswhere a new majority party had just taken power and leadership was highly contested in the party caucus, like the51st Congress(1889-1891), majority members largely stuck with their party’s nominee on the floor until the late 1990s.
But over the past 25 years or so, thatsystem has become less reliableas members have become more willingto vote against the party nomineein the public setting of the House floor.The decline in party discipline has many fathers, including thedecreased power of committees and increased sway of party leadership, which has made the speaker a greater target of intraparty frustration. Other factors includethe larger universe of fundraising outletsfor candidates and outside groups since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling inCitizens United v. FEC. On top of all this, there’s the internet-based media environment that memberscan use to build their own followingby grandstanding — a descriptor many haveapplied to Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s actionsto single-handedly precipitate McCarthy’s ouster in the first place.
Republicans may be struggling more with this new reality than Democrats. That’s likely because the GOP has greater suspicion toward government action, which has made Republicans both more skeptical of their own leadership and more amenable to legislative inaction. It’s true that Democrats in the majority have seen some substantial defections of their own in recent years. In 2019,15 Democrats broke with Pelosion the lone ballot for speaker, but the party had a somewhat larger majority than the GOP currently enjoys. Yet in 2021, Democrats againmanaged to reelect Pelosi as speakerdespite her past difficulties and a slim majority similar to Republicans’ current edge (her signaling that she intended to step downafter that Congress probably smoothed her path to reelection, to be sure). But in 2023, long-term trends in reduced party discipline, GOP factional strife and a razor-thin majority created the perfect storm for historically tough speaker races and even the unprecedented ousting of a sitting speaker.
False starts and uncertain next steps
In the face of the GOP’s current difficulties, some House Republicansproposed an unusual off-ramp: Formally empowering acting Speaker Pro Tempore McHenry to lead the House for the next few months so that it can conduct legislative business. Just before a Republican conference meeting on Thursday morning, Jordanannounced his support for the interim proposal, seemingly a signal that he wouldn’t seek a third speaker vote for the time being. In theory, the move would have given Jordan time to shore up internal support for a future speaker vote, as he wouldremain the party’s speaker nomineethrough McHenry’s interim term. But more broadly, some in the House GOPviewed this approachas the only way out of the morass.
However, the proposal ran into opposition at the Thursday conference meeting, and its future prospects remain unclear. Somehard-line membershad expressedsharp oppositionto the plan beforehand, with Texas Rep. Chip Royclaiming that Republicans“might as well be the Whigs” if they implement it — a reference to the pre-Civil War major party that fell apart in the 1850s. Party leaders have split over the interim plan, too. On one side, Scalise,Majority Whip Tom EmmerandConference Chair Elise Stefanikopposed it on the grounds that it would risk a coalition-style arrangement with Democrats, who would likely have to assist if a resolution to empower McHenry were to pass. But Jordan and McCarthy, who remains influential,both spoke in favor of the proposal.
After the party meeting,Jordan said there would be a third vote, which could happenFriday morning. Yet the heated disagreements within the GOP about how to proceed may continue, asJordan’s meetingwith his intraparty opponentsappears to have gone poorly. With a narrow majority and reduced party unity, the challenges that have brought House Republicans to this point aren’t going away. That means they could find themselves at yet another impasse when the House tries once more to permanently elect a speaker.
