Everybody is missing the core point here, that is utterly terrifying. The Motion to Vacate - At ANY time ANY member of the House can Move to Vacate. A vote is taken, and if the majority vote Yay, then the speaker loses their position, and a new speaker is elected. How many votes does it take to make someone the speaker? From Reuters: "A candidate must gain a majority of votes cast. With 435 seats in the chamber, the speaker must get 218 votes to win. If no candidate reaches that threshold, the House will continue voting until someone does." There are very few people actually sitting in the House of Representatives when any vote on any measure is taken. It could be 30 people in the entire building. This happens often with the minority party: they are powerless to do anything about the vote, so they often sit them out and spend their time on other meetings, committees, negotiations, whatever. Not every member of the House is present. Not every member of the House votes on every bill or motion. So all that needs to happen, is 5 Republicans sneak into the House at 3:AM, have a vote to Move to Vacate McCarthy from the Speakership, and then vote again for WHOEVER THEY WANT. Trump. DeSantis. Marilyn Manson. Mike Lindell. LITERALLY ANY AMERICAN can be the Speaker of the House. Now, there is one failsafe... and that is that McCarthy is responsible for the agenda and scheduling the sessions. So theoretically, every member of the House gets a calendar of upcoming bills and votes, and when they are scheduled to hit the floor. BUT THOSE SCHEDULES GET CHANGED. Sometimes on the fly. Sometimes they run long, and House members just leave to go take care of other business. All the Republicans have to do now is wait for one of these long and boring sessions, and once everyone leave for dinner or bed or whatever and they have the balance right in the House, ANY member can stand up and ask for the floor, then present the Move to Vacate, which is voted on immediately with whoever is left on the House floor. We could literally wake up tomorrow morning with Mike Lindell as the Speaker of the House and be completely powerless to do ANYTHING about it. That's fucking terrifying. And there is no defense against it. Democrats can't have 200 people sitting in the House, or within 5 minutes of the House floor, 24/7/365... so it is only a matter of time before this action is taken and something truly insane happens to the House.
Yes, this is one of the many parliamentary shenanigans enabled by our mennonite democracy. However, we just watched a week of "Republicans in Disarray" in which not a single democrat broke ranks even once. Some wonk at the New York Times made a point shortly after Trump was elected that has proven to be more true than anything else I've read. He pointed out that governments are composed not just of rules, but of customs... and that we were about to find out just how much of our governance was made of rules, because Trump gave no fux about customs. Matt Goetz very clearly gives no fux about customs, either. In this case, however, that hardly makes the Republicans stronger. Two armies fight. Both are the same size. One side, however, is twenty five percent in rebellion. Fully a quarter of their troops disagree as to who to fight, how to fight, what to fight over, and who they take orders from. And then... the rest of the government sits on its hands and goes "well shux you got us there good da-HYUK"? The Senate's gonna do that? Biden's gonna go along with it? The general argument made by actual observers of politics is that Kevin McCarthy is the weakest House Speaker since the Civil War and your corollary seems to be "therefore this is bad for the Democrats." This canard comes up whenever Republicans R Dix. TRUTH: the constitution does not specifically require the Speaker to be an elected member of Congress. FICTION: there is any precedent or suggestion or legal wiggle-room for the idea that the Speaker doesn't have to be an elected member of Congress. This is like John Eastman's "the Constitution doesn't specifically say the vice president can't pick whoever he wants to be President." Technically correct, the worst kind of correct. This happened recently. The end result was fuckall. As it turns out, if enough people go "nah" all the hare-brained shit in the world won't make anything change. And again, a quarter of the Republicans are at "nah" to anything other than Jewish space lasers. Every now and then, you should ask the Internet if anyone else is worried about what you're worried about, and if not, why not. The place is often wrong, but it has no shortage of opinions. Just spitballin' here but traditionally speaking, which party has been more about proper procedures, lists and organization of late? And which one brought the tiger?The Motion to Vacate - At ANY time ANY member of the House can Move to Vacate. A vote is taken, and if the majority vote Yay, then the speaker loses their position, and a new speaker is elected.
This happens often with the minority party: they are powerless to do anything about the vote, so they often sit them out and spend their time on other meetings, committees, negotiations, whatever. Not every member of the House is present. Not every member of the House votes on every bill or motion.
So all that needs to happen, is 5 Republicans sneak into the House at 3:AM, have a vote to Move to Vacate McCarthy from the Speakership, and then vote again for WHOEVER THEY WANT.
Trump. DeSantis. Marilyn Manson. Mike Lindell. LITERALLY ANY AMERICAN can be the Speaker of the House.
All the Republicans have to do now is wait for one of these long and boring sessions, and once everyone leave for dinner or bed or whatever and they have the balance right in the House, ANY member can stand up and ask for the floor, then present the Move to Vacate, which is voted on immediately with whoever is left on the House floor.
We could literally wake up tomorrow morning with Mike Lindell as the Speaker of the House and be completely powerless to do ANYTHING about it.
Democrats can't have 200 people sitting in the House, or within 5 minutes of the House floor, 24/7/365... so it is only a matter of time before this action is taken and something truly insane happens to the House.
Minor correction: Daylight Savings Time ends at the end of this year. It was simply postponed for 18 months when the air and rail carriers complained that they already had their schedules booked 12 months out, and needed more time for the transition to take place. 2024 won't have DST. Anyway, to the meat of your comments, I - as always - appreciate the context and framing and calming down you do. However you have also argued both sides of my concern: that it isn't a problem because the Republicans are in disarray, and that because the Republicans are in disarray and do not care about decorum or customs, a small rogue contingent can ABSOLUTELY make this happen just as I represented it. The Senate? The President? They don't have any say over the House and its internal workings. The House often passes things or makes policies or committees that are blatantly wrong/illegal/ineffectual and everyone just shakes their head sadly and ignores their work. The Speaker of the House is an internal position, voted on the House members present at the time of the vote. Period. Donezo. Maybe appointing Mike Lindell as the Speaker of the House is dumb. Maybe people will take issue with it outside of the House. But, as we all know, there is no enforcement mechanism in place except for custom; and the Republicans will throw that out without the slightest thought or regret. So we are back to the Speaker of the House being appointed in some late-night shenanigans which will give the NPR constitutional scholars conniptions, but will stand because there simply isn't any mechanism in place to make it NOT happen.
Womp womp I have done no such thing. I have argued that because they're feckless morons they can try. I can try to take a three foot vertical leap. We both know how it's gonna go, though. No, but they have a lot of power over what becomes law, or what gets enacted. Almost as if it was understood that this was meaningless grandstanding. You're arguing that the House is the government. The House is a part of the government. There's also no mechanism in place to make it matter, and the act of doing it calls into question the legality of everything that comes after so... the further you step from precedent, the less you have to stand on and the further you go down the road of disregarding precedent, the more the establishment locks things down. Look at Kevin McCarthy's Republican House as a bunch of beta-testers. Sure - they can do all sorts of insanely stupid shit. But they're doing it with a six vote majority. Without the Senate. Without the presidency. Are things going to be stupid? Mos def. Are they going to be apocalyptic? Not even vaguely.Minor correction: Daylight Savings Time ends at the end of this year.
In 2022, the United States Senate passed a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. If enacted, this bill would take effect starting in November 2023.
However you have also argued both sides of my concern: that it isn't a problem because the Republicans are in disarray, and that because the Republicans are in disarray and do not care about decorum or customs, a small rogue contingent can ABSOLUTELY make this happen just as I represented it.
The Senate? The President? They don't have any say over the House and its internal workings.
The House often passes things or makes policies or committees that are blatantly wrong/illegal/ineffectual and everyone just shakes their head sadly and ignores their work.
But, as we all know, there is no enforcement mechanism in place except for custom; and the Republicans will throw that out without the slightest thought or regret.
So we are back to the Speaker of the House being appointed in some late-night shenanigans which will give the NPR constitutional scholars conniptions, but will stand because there simply isn't any mechanism in place to make it NOT happen.