4th time’s a charm? House Republicans pick new speaker nominee late Tuesday

House Republicans have another nominee for speaker — the second in one day, and the fourth in the three weeks since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted.

The conference nominated Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., as their candidate for speaker late Tuesday. He won the nomination with 128 votes, according to Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman. He will need 217 votes in the full House to claim the speaker’s chair, which has now been vacant for three weeks.

Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the third-ranking House GOP lawmaker, dropped out of the speaker’s race Tuesday afternoon just hours after securing a majority of his party’s support in an internal conference election.

Within minutes of Emmer’s narrow win, more than 20 GOP lawmakers came out in opposition to his nomination, arguing his views on bipartisan spending bills and same-sex marriage did not represent the conservative wing of the conference — a stance reaffirmed by former President Donald Trump who told House Republicans Tuesday that voting for a “Globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!”

Emmer proceeded to remove himself from consideration by walking out of a closed-door meeting, according to Sherman. In this dramatic fashion, Emmer’s short-lived bid for the House’s top leadership position followed the precedent set by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan last week, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise the week before.

After Emmer withdrew, the House Republican Conference met Tuesday evening to hear from another round of candidates, including Johnson, who is the Republican conference vice chairman, who had come in second place to Emmer.

Aid to Israel on hold

The House has now been unable to advance legislation to the floor for 21 days, amid deep divides among Republicans over which personality is best suited to lead the conference. The chaos started with the removal of McCarthy by a small group of GOP lawmakers and all House Democrats at the beginning of October.

Despite a majority of House Republicans repeatedly demonstrating their desire to assign the speaker’s gavel, they only have a few votes to spare in the full House, where Democrats hold 212 seats to Republicans’ 221. This has enabled a small minority of lawmakers to tank any speaker’s bid they find issue with.

Related

• Jordan is out as GOP House speaker candidate, Republicans will start over on Monday

• Will the prolonged speaker’s race fix ‘out of control spending’? Or make it worse?

This congressional paralysis comes as both the House and the Senate need to pass 12 annual spending bills before Nov. 17’s federal funding deadline. President Joe Biden has also requested supplemental aid packages for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and the southern border.

Republican Reps. Dave Joyce of Ohio and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania have said if the conference is unable to unite, they will introduce a resolution to empower Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry of North Carolina to perform the duties of speaker for several weeks until Congress passes its annual spending bills.

This resolution would almost certainly need significant Democratic buy-in to pass. But a growing number of House Democrats and Republicans have expressed their openness to such a bipartisan solution as it starts to look like no Republican can receive 217 votes from their own conference.