So Kevin McCarthy created history by losing the first three rounds of voting for Speaker of the House. This increasingly dysfunctional GOP also started the clock on its next not-so-proud record: the longest that a House has gone without a Speaker. That was set back in the 1860s.

House rules say that a simple majority of the House — 218 congressmen — must vote for a Speaker-candidate for him/her to succeed. McCarthy won only 198 on the third ballot. While he appears to be unelectable for now having actually lost a vote on the third round, his potential GOP challengers are even less electable. They all trailed him by large numbers in the nominating round. Among them are Andy Biggs and the bigger idiot, Jim Jordan. Both are unlikely score into the triple digits.

This sets up a circumstance, again in theory, where the Dems wouldn’t have to wait for whatever poison the Republicans force Congress to drink but could instead be proactive against the GOP craziness and nominate an actual statesmen as a coalition candidate. It would likely need to be a Republican to gain any traction with House Rs but one that Democrats are somewhat comfortable with.

I noticed that AOC was in serious discussions with McCarthy haters between votes. That’s when the idea occurred to me so she may be way ahead of me. Because the GOP majority in the House is so razor thin (212:222) the Dems only need to flip six (6) Republicans to elect a bipartisan coalition candidate as Speaker of the House.

Furthermore, it doesn’t even have to be a member of Congress. Imagine if the Dems nominated someone like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinziger or Jeff Flake for Speaker. Could they pull away six votes from what remains of GOP moderates? Maybe not now, of course. But wait for a few weeks of a House unable to take up any business at all without a Speaker and attitudes may change. It can’t even seat the incoming freshman class or pay them without a Speaker to gavel in the new 118th Congress.

There may be large political differences between these coalition candidates and Democrats but one could fairly presume that they wouldn’t let insipid wankers like MTG, Boebert, Gosar, Gaetz, et. al. sit on any key committees nor let them hijack Congress or change its rules to serve them.