Scalise abruptly drops House speaker bid as Republicans remain in disarray with no Plan B

By Joseph Morton and Todd J. Gillman

WASHINGTON — A long day of paralysis and infighting among House Republicans ended Thursday with turmoil, as Majority Leader Steve Scalise dropped his bid to become speaker the day after fellow Republicans nominated him.

The abrupt decision came hours after a testy closed-door session at which Scalise and others struggled to come up with ideas that might satisfy, or circumvent, 15 to 20 holdouts.

House Republicans picked Scalise to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday on a 113-99 vote. But many supporters of his rival, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, refused to fall in line, leaving him well short of the 217 needed to defeat the Democratic leader in a vote of the entire House.

“I’m not cutting any deals,” Scalise said after a 2½-hour afternoon meeting ended without a breakthrough, and with his own supporters and Jordan’s expressing frustration.

Some floated ideas to break the impasse that others quickly rejected.

Give the acting speaker more authority so they can get some legislating done? Meh.

Ask Democrats to help break the logjam? Not a chance.

Reporters asking when the House will vote were met with shrugs. (Late Thursday the GOP set a meeting for 10 a.m. Friday.)

Warm chocolate chip cookies passed around at one point were met with more widespread enthusiasm than Scalise, who lost ground as the day wore on rather than consolidating support as planned.

“We’re dysfunctional, we’re disorganized and we’re broken,” said Rep. Troy Nehls of Richmond as he left the meeting, grumbling that he might yet revive his idea of nominating former President Donald Trump as speaker if the stalemate spills into next week.

“One of the members said in there, ‘I don’t think the Lord Jesus himself could get 217,’” Nehls said. “There’s some validity to that.”

That’s the magic number with 433 seats currently filled in the House.

One way out floated by Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., and others would require collaboration with Democrats. No Democrat would support a Republican for speaker, he said, “but they could vote present, and reduce the threshold.”

So, for instance, if 10 Democrats voted present, a speaker would need 207 votes out of 413.

“Terrible idea,” said Rep. August Pfluger, R-San Angelo. “We’ve got the majority. We’ve got to be able to deal with it ourselves.”

Rep. Roger Williams of Willow Park, a Scalise supporter, called it a “nonstarter” to rely on Democrats.

“We’re Republicans, we’re conservatives, we’re in leadership and we’ve got to work it out among ourselves,” he said. “We’ve got to lead and that’s what everybody’s getting a little frustrated on.”

Williams, who owns a car dealership in Weatherford, said wrangling the holdouts should be approached like putting a customer in a new Jeep Grand Cherokee.

“Selling a car is all about objections. You answer the objections, you make a sale,” he said. “We need to set them in front and we need to say, ‘What is it going to take?’”

Rep. Keith Self of McKinney voted for Jordan in the internal vote but, like most colleagues, said he would support Scalise as the winner. On Thursday, he reversed course.

“It has become evident that all the agreements and Rules with the former Speaker are null and void,” Self wrote on Facebook, referring to concessions McCarthy made to conservatives for their support. “In January, we held the line for a Rules package that restores power back to the people. We need a leader with the same resolve.”

Rep. Monica De La Cruz of McAllen said she was disappointed Self refused to back Scalise despite party rules that call for Republicans to support the person who gets the most votes in conference.

“The conference should get behind and rally behind our speaker,” she said.

Members who backed Scalise called on colleagues to rally behind him so Congress can address the terror attacks on Israel and other crises.

“We’re playing with fire,” said House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul of Austin. “If we don’t have a speaker, we can’t assist Israel in this great time of need.”

Eight conservative rebels led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., engineered McCarthy’s downfall last week, using a rule they’d forced on him in January that let any one member of the House demand a snap vote on whether to remove the speaker,

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Humble, shrugged off the lost time, noting the House was scheduled to be on break this week anyway. “What I’m hoping for next is that people will just get into a room with Steve, the people who are against him, and just have it out with him privately,” he said.

That didn’t happen.

Emerging from an afternoon meeting he described as “very constructive” despite the ongoing resistance to his ascent, Scalise conceded that a breakthrough remained elusive.

“The good news is our support continues to grow. We’re continuing to work to narrow the gap,” he said. “We have people obviously, of different backgrounds that have different passions, which for 2½ hours talked through those.”

Rep. Chip Roy of Austin wanted to hold off on picking a speaker until someone secured 217 Republican votes. Colleagues shot down the proposal Wednesday and he kept pushing the idea Thursday as the stalemate persisted.

Picking the right leaders — someone with the full GOP conference behind him — is more important than acting quickly, he argued.

“Oh yeah, let’s just go pluck the person out of row 11 to go fly the plane. Is that what you guys want? Just because there’s a sense of urgency?” he said.

Roy said the House could act if necessary, rejecting warnings that Israel, the federal budget or any other issues require immediate attention: “We’ve got a war in Israel that Israel is perfectly capable of fighting,” he said.

Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., an emergency room physician, saw no apparent cure for the paralysis. “There’s nobody in that room that’s ever been through this. Not one person alive in this whole world has seen this,” he said.

With Scalise still in the hunt, some opponents demanded an end to internal deliberations, even if that meant humiliation for him and taking the squabbles public.

“We can fight this out on the House floor. We need to start voting,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

A Jordan supporter, she reminded colleagues that Scalise is fighting multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer.

“When you’re in a tight game, and there’s a lot of pressure happening, you don’t put an injured player or a sick player on the field,” she told reporters.

Womack called it “fantasy” to think Republicans could resolve the impasse on the floor, noting that anti-Scalise forces “are dug in.”

One option, he said, might be to give Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry temporary authority so the House can conduct some business. That might require a rules change, but changing the rules is among the many things the House can only do once it has a speaker in place.

“That would be testing the limits of his authority,” Womack said. “The lawyers will have to look at that or the parliamentarian. … There’s not a playbook here.”

Also not a popular option.

“A temporary or a holdover or caretaker is not what the members are interested in,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla.

This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.