For the 118th Congress, there are 212 Dems in the House, not 216. There are 222 Republicans, for a total of 434. One seat is open (I don't know why). A majority of the House is 218 votes, so the GOP has 5 votes to spare.
Now that the basic math is out of the way, all 212 Dems did cast votes for Jeffries on each of the 10 ballots so far. So yes, believe it or not, all of them agree that Jeffries is their man. Unless you can provide evidence that their "real bosses" told them to vote for him, that's just an unfounded personal opinion/conspiracy theory, not a fact.
And yes, the Dems could break the log jam by switching votes to McCarthy, but he needs at least 15 of them to do that. The Dems only need 6 Republicans to switch their vote to Jeffries, so which side has the heavier lift, and which of the two options seems most likely to happen? Biden campaigned for unity, not stupidity.
The real problem here is that there's a small group of Republicans who hate McCarthy, they're holding the party hostage (and by extension, the rest of the nation), and not one of them has a serious alternative to offer. There was never a Plan B - that's why Kevin moved his stuff into the Speaker's Office before he was elected Speaker; he just assumed he would win.
I don't know what the solution is. Maybe the Republicans can convince McCarthy to change his first name to "Speaker". Then they can give him a toy gavel, send him home to CA to play with it, and figure out what their next step is going to be.
|
