The Republican soap opera continues today. Yesterday's installment continued the stalemate with Spineless McCarthy losing his 4th, 5th, and 6th votes and the party barely able to squeak through and get a final adjournment til noon today. The story today is that Spineless has offered to lower the threshold for a vote to vacate the chair (in other words a vote to fire him) to ONE Republican member. Someone asked yesterday when the threshold had been reduced to FIVE how many speakers might we see over the next two years. Another commentator said that when you try to sell your soul you need to make sure there is a buyer. Evidently, Spineless has no reliable buyer. I would go a bit further and note that, when you sell your soul, you inevitably sell cheap. It looks, to me, like Spineless has should his for nothing. He has promised everything and gotten promises for nothing.
Robert Reich has a piece this morning on what would be a sane strategy but I don't think it has a chance in hell. Neither side is in the mood to consider it.
An interesting question came up on Morning Joe just now. Compromise has become a dirty word implying that whoever compromises has betrayed his principles. The question was how to move the conversation away from that either/or dichotomy. I think the answer Sherrod Brown provides is a side step that doesn't really answer the question: find common ground. When principles are involved sometimes there is no common ground.
The 7th vote in the House trying to elect a Speaker. Results:Jeffries--212; MCCarthy--201; Donalds--19; Other (Trump)--1; Present--1. No Speaker elected. The 8th round of voting is just beginning.
The 8th round of voting has ended with no change except a new name entered during the voting. No election.
They are going into round 9 but I am closing this for the day.
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