Congress enters uncharted territory

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No. 289 | October 20, 2023

🗽 Congress

Geoffrey Skelley: How House Republicans failed to elect a speaker (538)

“The ongoing strife within the Republican conference has many origins. Unlike McCarthy, Jordan’s views sit well to the right of 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…