What’s going to happen with the U.S. House of Representatives?
The slim Republican majority can’t agree on whom to speak as speaker of the House. Most wanted Steve Scalise, but enough wanted right-wing firebrand Jim Jordan that Scalise wouldn’t go through a public vote for speaker.
As I write this, Jordan is planning for a third vote for speaker of the House. He needs 217 votes to win; he got 200 votes in the first vote on Tuesday, Oct. 17, then 199 votes a day later. Meanwhile, all 212 Democrats voted for Hakeem Jeffries for speaker.
Patrick McHenry, who’s running things in the interim as speaker pro tempore, doesn’t want the speaker’s job. And even if he were interested, it’s unlikely that he could get 217 members of the House to vote for him.
Jeffries has spoken about being open to the idea of working with some Republicans on a unity speaker. Nothing in the Constitution requires the speaker to be a member of the House of Representatives (or even a U.S. citizen), so they could pick anyone.
One possibility that I’d thought of previously has now been floated publicly by a Democratic member of Congress: George W. Bush. The former president would likely be willing to do it, and he could plausibly get the votes of a lot of Republicans and a few Democrats. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, is the only member of Congress who has proposed this publicly as far as I know.
I’ve also read about possibly bringing back John Boehner. That’s not crazy; he’s done the job before, and he’s a Republican. The other living former speakers would never get the job. (Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t get any votes from Republicans. Dennis Hastert wouldn’t be considered by either party since he had a scandal involving sex abuse when he was a high school wrestling coach. Newt Gingrich is utterly toxic to Democrats.)
Another possible speaker to consider is Jenniffer González, someone I first wrote about here.
Even if you follow American politics closely, you’re probably asking, “Who’s that?” She’s the “resident commissioner” from Puerto Rico. That means she is Puerto Rico’s member of the House of Representatives who has a vote in committees, but not in full votes of the House, because Puerto Rico isn’t a state.
Her mainland political affiliation is Republican, but in island politics, she’s a member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party. She has experience as a legislative speaker, having served four years as speaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives.
González wants statehood for Puerto Rico, and most Democrats would be perfectly willing to go along with that. She would probably be willing to cut off any impeachment inquiries into the Biden administration, plus agree to a number of other things Democrats want, in exchange for Democrats being willing to make Puerto Rico statehood a high priority. And because she’s a longtime Republican, she can probably get a number of Republicans to agree to support her as well.
González would be an unorthodox choice, but why not?