The Morning Briefing: Scalise Is Out, So the GOP Drama in the House Is Over, Right?

Top O’ the Briefing

Happy Friday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Xerwich surprised everyone at the Corduroy Revival Society with his snack night choice of double-stuffed fruit paste tacos.

First, anyone who made it this far and thought for even a nanosecond that my headline was sincere is obviously new here.

If you are a political junkie and have the ability to detach while devouring the news, the House Republicans are providing a lot of entertainment these days. It’s all unintentional, of course. If they deliberately tried to be entertaining, somebody might get hurt.

The office of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives is, in theory, one of the greatest prizes in American politics. By the time the GOP is done with all of this, there might not be anyone who wants the job.

After Kevin McCarthy was shown to the door by Matt Gaetz and the other kids at his cafeteria lunch table, it was hoped that something would be resolved this week in the way of replacing him. When Steve Scalise eked out a nomination victory over Jim Jordan, a handful of Jordan supporters put everyone on notice that they weren’t going to be allowed to have nice things.

Maybe ever.

That news is literally SO Wednesday, though. By late Thursday, all that was out the window, which Matt covered for us:

One day after winning the Republican nomination for House speaker, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) has dropped out of the speakership race.

“It’s been quite a journey. And there’s still a long way to go. I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for the speaker designee,” Scalise said. “This country is counting on us to come back together. This House of Representatives needs a Speaker and we need to open up the House again. But clearly, not everybody is there. And there’s still schisms that have to get resolved.”

“There’s some folks that really need to look in the mirror over the next couple of days and decide, are we going to get it back on track or are they going to try to pursue their own agenda. You can’t do both,” he added.

Kudos to Scalise for not lingering until the last possible moment before yielding to the inevitable. His hope that some of his colleagues might opt for the greater good rather than their delicate little feelings might be a bit Pollyanna-ish. There’s a lot of “What have you done for me lately?” going on in the GOP on the House side right now. When one hangs around Republican politics long enough, one learns that the party operates on the notion that the shortest distance between two points is via a circular firing squad.

The GOP penchant for making things convoluted is so strong that I wouldn’t be surprised if the ghost of Sonny Bono walked onto the House floor and demanded to be considered for the speaker gig.

It’s a shame that Scalise didn’t withdraw earlier in the day so we could have seen where the various take-their-ball-and-go-home types would line up. Are the people who initially voted for Scalise going to stomp their feet and give a big “Oh HELL no!” if Jim Jordan is the new Number One?

Jordan would, of course, be a great choice for conservatives. There aren’t as many of those as we would like among the House Republicans, however. The McCarthy wing of the GOP is a little light on fans of members of the Freedom Caucus. Even so, a couple of them were supporting Jordan because Scalise and McCarthy don’t get along. Now that Scalise isn’t the alternative, I doubt they’ll remain on Team Jordan.

As Matt notes in his post, there’s a little too much going on in the world right now, and the GOP doesn’t need this sideshow to become protracted.

Somebody should probably tell them that.

Programming Note: The Mailbag of Magnificence will be in Monday’s Briefing.

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