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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win.
Well, this week in Washington, somebody was supposed to win the speakership of the House.
That was supposed to happen today on Wednesday. That was a self-imposed deadline that Republicans put forward. They had a private meeting this afternoon to vote on who the nominee would be for Speaker of the House. The person who won was Steve Scalise. He's the former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy's number two. He won 113 votes in a matchup against Jim Jordan, who won 99 votes. He's a hardliner House Freedom Caucus member, Republican.
And, you know, Jordan left the meeting and said that he would back Scalise for Speaker and that he would even nominate him on the House floor. And, you know, OK, everyone thought maybe the party had actually picked Speaker and there would be a vote.
But, of course, within minutes, there were tweets from various members saying, no, they will still only vote for Jim Jordan on the House floor. There's Max Miller, Anna Paulina Luna. Nancy Mace said that she won't vote for Steve Scalise for a comment he made many years ago, and probably for good reason, because he said that...
He was like David Duke, the famous segregationist, but without the baggage. So clearly, Steve Scalise does not have it locked up. And this House Republican caucus feels no need to show cohesion, to show leadership or loyalty to anyone. And so it's starting to look like last January,
when Kevin McCarthy wasn't able to get the votes. And, you know, he was going to have to go before the House floor, and he thought he might fail. And actually, he went through it 14 times. Then he won the 15th time after making all these concessions, including giving one person the right to basically call a vote to take his speakership down. And I guess this is what happens when you only win the majority by a handful of votes. But still, this is really starting to feel like deja vu.
So for now, Steve Scalise is going to spend time on the phone, whipping, whipping, whipping, trying to get the votes he needs to become Speaker of the House. But he might be in the same spot that Kevin McCarthy was in last year. And in the meantime, a war is raging in Israel. They likely need aid from America. And the person who can do that puts
put the bill on the floor to send the aid is the Speaker of the House, second in line to the President. Very powerful role in this country. We also need to fund the government in a few weeks. So there's, it's pressing. Also, the Republican Party should need a Speaker of the House to raise money for them to work on messaging and communications. There's so many reasons why you would want a leader of your party. And
We'll see if they can actually pull it off or if this is just going to be a stalemate. That goes on for days, weeks. Who knows? Maybe Democrats will pick the speaker. So I brought in my colleague, Abby Livingston, who covers Congress, to go over the complexity and absurdity of it all. Okay, Abby. So Republicans kind of sort of picked a speaker of the House.
The kind of sort of qualifier is key here. Steve Scalise earlier Wednesday captured a majority of House Republicans, which means he's basically their nominee to be speaker. But he will have to go to the House floor and capture a majority of the entire House, which would put us somewhere over 200 votes. So he's basically in the same position that Kevin McCarthy was in before the 15 rounds of votes. Yes.
you know, days and days of embarrassment that he suffered last January when he tried to become Speaker of the House. We're basically in the same situation we were in about 10 months ago, right? But we have a nominee who doesn't have the votes locked up. We've got a nominee who does not have the votes locked up at all.
This is a step forward for House Republicans to find a new speaker, but I don't sense any more stability in the United States House of Representatives than we saw eight days ago when Kevin McCarthy was ousted. We are still in complete and total chaos. Got it. All right. Just wanted to lay the groundwork out there.
Yeah, I'm not laughing because it's great. I'm laughing because I'm in shock. I have no other way of expressing myself. So they were supposed to vote on the House floor for a speaker today, correct? That was the plan after their private meeting?
It may have been a tentative plan, but nobody I was talking to in the lead up to this even thought there would be a floor vote this week in the reality. So there's one thing of like formality of Congress, but then there's the reality. And I think I think establishment Republicans are pleased that Scalise won, but this was not expected to be wrapped up this week.
It's crazy because I'm looking online and I'm seeing the same rabble-rousers who did not want to give McCarthy the gavel back in January. Anna Paulina Luna, the congresswoman who was actually named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People, believe it or not, posted a video, an anchorman video, implying that she would not be voting for Steve Scalise. It's that video where all the news teams come out and they fight.
They have like a brawl, a duel in the alleyway. And she's implying, you know what, I'm not voting for Scalise and neither are the guys who are still backing McCarthy. And so she's basically saying, you don't have it wrapped up, Scalise.
It wasn't just her. McCarthy ally Marjorie Taylor Greene said our favorite phrase in Puck, the quiet part out loud. She said she had an affinity for Steve Scalise, but she was not supporting him because he's in cancer treatment right now, which that had been a concern with Scalise. In the lead up to this, there have been stated reports
that he would not be able to hit the road to help with candidate recruitment, fundraising. And so she said that out loud and said she would not support him. So this is... It's very similar in the situation, but there are a couple of different characters. I still don't think we know the full scope of dissent. Now...
One thing that's really in his favor is, well, two things. One, he has not led the party before. McCarthy had for a long time before he became speaker. And on number of slides...
Yes. He replaced Paul Ryan. And a number of slights had built up over the year that were very personal in nature that manifested in his downfall. Scalise hasn't had that responsibility. So it's a little bit of a fresh start. There's less personal animus in this contest. The other thing was the public whip count in media outlets in the lead up to this show, Jordan, was pretty far ahead. But...
whipping is a very private thing. And Scalise came out ahead and he's got a strong whip operation. He is a majority leader, whereas Jordan had only been a chairman. And so I think Scalise sort of beat expectations. I think he's got a
competent team behind him. But I will say that people who back him in the operative class are extremely nervous about a House vote on the floor that will be on live television. And I mean, anybody who goes to the floor as a Republican nominee for speaker, it is going to be a very stressful hour or two of however long it'll take to do the vote.
I mean, he could end up going through multiple rounds just like McCarthy did. Yes. The other thing is, I just want to go back to this whole idea of whipping. I mean, whipping is essentially making private calls to the members, sometimes making them promises, you know, reminding them of things you've done in the past, basically trying to get them to vote the way that you want them to vote, right? And so it's really like hitting the phone. It's very time intensive. And...
Scalise has been around for a long time and he's been fundraising for these members, giving out money to members in vulnerable districts. He also asks a lot of questions, I've been told, and he's very personable. He almost died on the baseball field during the congressional baseball game when he was shot at. And he sort of gets a hero status for that. But at the same time, there are still some people he clearly hasn't won over. What is the exact number that's still holding out for him?
I mean, I think that's to be seen. It'll just depend. But I think the other thing about whipping that's important, it's not just the persuasion and the, you know, also implicit threat of retribution that in
that happens during these sorts of races, you got to read minds. And one really amazing, I think there's so many armchair quarterbacks who watch politics and think they know everything. This is the heart of the political process. And so if you are running for a chairmanship or a leadership race, and you're trying to get people to back you, and you approach someone and they say, I think you would be a great speaker, or I think you would be a great chairman, that means nothing. And
you know, unless you hear the words, I will support you, you should not be counting that person. And then on top of that, you've got to calculate whether that person's being honest with you. Did they tell someone else the same thing? Right.
So this is where the relationships come in. This is where the genius of Nancy Pelosi truly existed. She really did have a handle on the psychology of individual members. And so this is something that is really hard for us reporters to get at until it actually happens.
I mean, even when McCarthy was whipping before his motion to vacate vote and there was that member, the one who said that McCarthy insulted him when it came to his religion, when he said, I'll pray on it. Do you remember that? Not off the top of my head. There's so many loose pieces. But yeah, I mean, this could... There are...
Yeah, a personal slight from years ago could surface here. Most members sort of put those away and sort of make a calculation based on their best chances for the future and where they want to climb. But I don't think we're really operating with
terribly with a lot of people who think that far ahead or quite frankly are emotionally mature. His name is Tim Burchett. And he said that... Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He said that Kevin McCarthy made a condescending comment about the fact that he was going to pray on the vote for McCarthy. And then that sealed it for him right there that he made some sort of condescending decision about praying on the speakership vote. So it is very personal.
And you can sort of make mistakes. And like you said, you have to be able to read minds. The question is, can Steve Scalise win enough minds when only five people can basically take this away from him too, right? Which means that somebody else could arise again. This could go on for weeks. They could end up back in conference realizing that Steve Scalise does not have the votes and that they have to pick another person and then another person.
Correct. So this is, this is, last week it sort of felt like a novelty, sort of like the 2000 recount, like, oh, this is such a historical moment and it's such a strange moment. And just to state the obvious, what's happening in Israel has escalated this along with the uncertainty of how unstable this feels and how anxious people who know how things work are feeling.
And how long do you think Scalise has to wrap this up before they think, okay, let's go to another person? I honestly don't know. One, because I don't have any historical precedent to learn from. I think...
There is an anxiousness to get this moving and to move on. And there are Republicans who think once they can get this settled, they can move on and things will return to a sense of normalcy. But you could also make the argument that maybe Spillis will win this by attrition, like how kind of Kevin McCarthy did it in January. And so if there's a point where people are just so tired of voting that they just give in. So I think it could go either way. Actually...
Kevin McCarthy gave them the motion to vacate. That's how he won. He gave them the rule that only one of them could call a vote to motion to vacate. Isn't that how he won? Yes, but I just also think in politics, physical exhaustion and being out of patience also moves things. So I think both are true. But will Steve Scalise go through that same embarrassing process that Kevin McCarthy went through by making the members stay on the House floor and vote for him over and over and over again?
When we're, you know, our greatest ally is in the middle of war? I think it becomes a question of if not him, then who? And we are back to square one. Wow.
It's this is this really cannot be overstated to people outside of the Capitol Hill circle of how crazy the situation is. I mean, it's it's I think in my mind and it's it's up there with the insurrection, maybe the financial crisis and the scramble to save the American economy. This is this is very, very serious.
There was a debate going into this private conference meeting with all the Republicans over whether the person who stepped out of that meeting should, you know, have
almost all of the votes locked up 217 before they went to the floor or just a simple majority. And Steve Scalise's team did not want to have to fight for all 217 votes. They thought, let's just get a majority and everyone else will fall in line. And what happened? You know, he got the simple majority essentially or the majority of votes and
I guess within minutes, I don't know how long it was, maybe half hour, Republicans were tweeting that they weren't going to support him, like Anna Paulina Luna and Max Miller and others. And Jim Jordan actually came out and said, I will put forth Steve Scalise's name so that people won't choose me, right? So that they won't vote for me on the House floor because you can really vote for anyone. That's why, you know, Gates called Donald Trump and it's happened before. It seems like
it all sort of fell apart, even though Scalise's team was so confident that they would fall in line. Like, what's your reading on all of this? I just don't think it's a conference that can be controlled in the way we understand it.
those sorts of things. I think the smartest analysis I've seen on it so far is from a Republican lobbyist named Liam Donovan. And what he said at this point in the afternoon was, what's not yet clear is whether Jordan actually controls the folks who are causing trouble in his name or whether he's just a cudgel against the establishment. But this is just not how... I just think it underscores
This was all, the writing was all on the wall with this in the aftermath of the midterms last year when Republicans had such a narrow caucus or conference. But the counter argument is always to that Nancy Pelosi managed a similar margin. So I think it is, as weak of a leader as Kevin McCarthy was, I do think it's very much worth pointing out this is a conference that does not march in lockstep. They literally only have a majority by five votes, right?
It depends on the day. And it depends on if somebody's out with COVID or something. So it can get kind of testy. But yeah, so I always just say handful.
Okay, so they only have a majority by a handful of votes. And that's very difficult to lead, especially when the party is so vastly different from these hard right Republicans, you know, to people in upstate New York, like Mike Lawler's district, where he won in a Biden plus five or five to 10 seat. So you've got like the full range. And perhaps Kevin McCarthy was...
a better representative of this broad caucus, right? Is Scalise seen as further to the right or left of Kevin McCarthy? Further to the right. And he's... I would say I've never...
heard anyone say anything negative about Scalise personally. I'm not pretending like I've had thousands of conversations, but he's got a pretty congenial image on the Hill and he's always kind of smiling. So I there, which McCarthy had at one point, but being a leader and disappointing people certainly took its toll.
Yeah. I mean, that's what happens, right, over time. If you're just the guy who's handing out money and listening to people complain, you're probably beloved until you've got to take the hard votes and ask people to do you favors and that kind of stuff. So we'll see how long that lasts for. You know, GOP sources keep reminding me that Trump's backing of Jordan hurt him. It hurt him with moderates and that it was a secret ballot after all. And it's...
Is this, you know, and they keep trying to say, oh, it's a sign the party's over Trump. Of course, they have their own agendas. I don't really believe that. But in fact, Punchbowl's Jake Sherman, he was on the show on Tuesday, and he sort of reminded me that Trump just sucks at gaming out the hill. And he really couldn't help McCarthy in the speakership race when he twice tried to get involved. And I just was wondering what you take of Trump's engagement in this by supporting Jim Jordan. Yeah.
There are a few people I listen to more closely than Jake. And I really appreciate it and learned a lot from that interview. What I will say is Trump, this was a secret ballot, as you stated. So unless there's some interest group or person who wants to try to pigeonhole every single House Republican and by process of elimination, figure out who did and did not vote,
vote for Jordan and, you know, whether Trump wants to exact revenge in a primary, I don't think that'll happen. So I just don't think there was a political price to pay for crossing Trump in private. But if it goes to the floor and Trump wants to make an issue of it, then they do have to stand up and cross Trump. But, you know, the flip side of it is, is Trump has so many things going on right now besides running for president. I know, I was thinking to myself, like, does he really have the time? Yeah.
Does he have the focus and attention to kind of do the systematic types of revenge and primaries like we've seen him do in the past? And so, you know, I just don't think this was a situation where I think it was sort of a safe situation to cross Trump. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've been a lot of, or dialing up a sweat session indoors.
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So I'm going to throw something out there that I've been thinking for a while and I actually hate that I'm saying it, but I've always sort of felt that Matt Gaetz would sort of pick the next speaker and
back when I was reporting on the first speakership race, like all 15 rounds of it, I kept thinking, you know, Matt Gaetz has said, well, we take Scalise. And I thought, if not then, then at another time, it would just end up being Steve Scalise. And I still sort of feel it now. Like did Matt Gaetz single-handedly take down the speaker of the house and then pick the next one? I mean, what do you think about that?
Well, it just remains to be seen if Scalise is going to get the votes. And the thing about Matt Gaetz's power in this is basically every other House Republican has the same power. Matt Gaetz is just generally more willing to, in the political term we use, burn down the barn rather than... Whereas moderates tend to not want to cause those kinds of problems while enacting their will. So I think it's, you know, watch the moderates. More to risk. And we'll see. Yeah.
And I mean, if you did that in a moderate district, you would probably be punished by your constituents. They're acting in accordance with their constituency. But he comes from a very red district, so he can do that. He can take down the leadership. And they would probably think that was great. But if you're a moderate member, you probably don't want that. Yeah, yeah.
And moderates have the implicit threat. You know, if you were a moderate who was unhappy with Kevin McCarthy, you probably kept it to yourself, especially, I mean, specifically a moderate in a competitive district, because there is the implicit threat of you're going to, you could have your funding for your house race lost for television ads coming out of the NRCC. So there's a lot of... Because Kevin McCarthy decides who, or the leader of the party ultimately decides who, where the money goes.
There's some legal kind of considerations there, but generally, yes. So that keeps moderates in line. But, you know, Matt Gaetz, the usual rules of punishment that are used to get people in line do not work on Matt Gaetz.
They tend to work better on vulnerable members. Because he also doesn't really care about committees, right? He doesn't really care about the kind of things, introducing legislation, getting the support of leadership to pass laws the way that other members do. But then there's the weird case of Nancy Mace, who does come from a swing district and needed the support of Kevin McCarthy. And he said he gave her about like $2 to $3 million to support her in her last race.
What I didn't realize was until today was thanks to New York Times piece was how Mesa's district is now much more Republican after redistricting, which I had no idea about. And the Times piece by Jonathan Weissman tracked how her sort of rambunctiousness and willingness to challenge Republicans
and to be a rebel aligns with her district now. But yes, Nancy Mace has been the center of interest in this whole thing, including wearing a white tank top with the scarlet letter A on it to the speaker's forum on Tuesday night, which is just another kind of strange behavior from House Republicans in the last few days as things seem to be spinning out of control.
Yeah, I mean, I saw that. That's very weird. And everyone keeps sort of the sort of like underground whisper in Washington is that even after voting to impeach Trump, she's now sort of positioning herself to possibly be his vice president. I don't know why he would pick someone from South Carolina that doesn't help him. And he doesn't need that state at all. And usually you think about the demographic, not just, you know, the demographics, but the state. But you have heard that as well, right? That she's sort of positioning herself to be on the Trump ticket. Yeah.
I had not at all. But what I can say is... And I'm not picking on Mace specifically on this. Um...
It's kind of just important to not overthink these people. Sometimes it's just about getting attention. That is the end goal. And getting on television or being followed by the press corps. And that is often the end goal and the immediate... Sometimes these people are not playing three-dimensional chess. So I'm not tamping that down. I had not heard that. But I think that is such a driving compulsion among some members. Because there's 435 of them, right? Yes. All dying to be on cable news. Yes.
Most walk off the House floor and reporters don't know their names. And when they start getting recognized, that is a different ballgame of, I don't know, the psychology of a member of Congress. Right. There was something that Jake mentioned when we spoke on Monday. He said that if this keeps dragging out for weeks, that he could see the Democrats picking a Republican speaker so that they can pass a spending bill.
And pass, you know, Israeli supplemental aid that can be sent over and maybe Ukraine, Taiwan, all the things that they want, that if they would be willing to pick a temporary speaker because the person in there right now, Patrick Henry, he we're still trying to figure out if he even has the ability to put forth bills and to pass legislation. Right.
I think a Chad Pergram of Fox News, a producer, has made this point. We are in such uncharted historical territory that I think there is a conscious effort to really think through the precedents being set right now for someday in the future when it's a completely different situation. But I would have thought that would have been unthinkable last week. And I actually wrote so much because...
You know, Democrats can help empower a Republican speaker and then that person could turn around and raise money for the NRCC to be used against Democrats. So it's just sort of a it would mean a reorganization of how we practice politics. But a week into this, I don't think this is I don't think that's completely crazy. I know I thought the same thing. Like, wouldn't that hurt them when they're trying to run for reelection if they had voted for a Republican? Right. Right.
I mean, I think it'll be an interesting group of Democrats who do it. Like if I was in a super safe Democratic seat, I wouldn't want to touch that vote with a 10-foot pole. I mean, I'm just thinking off the top of my head, but you could also have like people voting present. You know, there's some things you can do to keep your hands a little clean. But, you know, this is, you know, I think it's just important to remember that
A handful of members were on a code del over the weekend. And part of that trip was Israel and they are returning back. And I mean, I, I just think this, there are a number of people who are trying to, or who are treat, who are getting more and more sober about the circumstances this country's facing. Yeah. Another name that's being floated is the speaker pro temp, Patrick McHenry, that he would be the one that Democrats ultimately just,
because he's already in the job and it makes the most sense. And it's not like some thought out process where they pick their favorite Republican. They just sort of pick the guy who's there because of procedural needs and they can sort of, you know, spin it that way to their, you know, to their constituents as well. I mean, what do you think if they were going to pick their own speaker? It'd probably be, it would probably be him, right? I'm not going to predict anything, but what I can say two things. One,
Three things. McHenry has surfaced in conversations I've had coming back from Labor Day as sort of a place of stability within a very crazy conference. The second thing is he is a policy guy. He's the chairman of financial services. He's a campaign guy. I remember interviewing him eight years ago about recruitment for House candidates. And he knows how to whip. Yeah.
The person, and I don't have any sort of reporting on this, but the person I would first want to interview in that scenario you set up is Maxine Waters, who's the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee. She's very powerful. She's very prominent in the Congressional Black Caucus. And she probably knows Patrick McHenry better than any other Democrat. So I don't have any reporting to say, but that's who I would want to talk to. Abby, let's talk about the long-term effects of having...
not having a speaker. Obviously, there is legislation that's not passed, but it's got to hurt the actual party, like the GOP, the Republican Party, because a big part of being speaker is raising money, right? So what do you think about this? I mean, I think even a lost week is a problem. I mean, these fundraising numbers, I mean, it could be, you know, lost money that's not raised that could be spent on one congressional district a year from now. But I think also when you look at this and pull back,
When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, sort of the implicit message to voters was, Trump's a little crazy, but Paul Ryan will be here and he can move the agenda and there will still be a sense of normalcy. I think what we're seeing right now is a very chaotic presidential contest, a very chaotic United States House of Representatives. And one of the refrains I'm hearing over and over around the Hill is like the happiest...
camp right now is Mitch McConnell's camp because even a diminished Mitch McConnell is running a more functional Senate than any other part of the Republican Party. So I just think there is just a mural of chaos coming out of the Republican Party. That said, I've had Republican voices in my ear say, we are a year away. I will always keep in mind that during the 2013 government shutdown,
Republican polling went down, but it bounced back a few weeks later after Democrats had a failed Obamacare website. So we are very far out, but this stuff doesn't have... I mean, this stuff has to have some consequences down the road. Whether or not to make a difference is the question in my mind. Also, the fact that it's happened multiple times. There are multiple historic instances in which the Republicans have been shown to be inept. It's not just like...
you know, one shutdown over a cycle. It's like a 15, you know, round speakership vote, actually removing the speaker, now not being able to pick a speaker. There's just a bunch of various...
you know, instances of a party that can't lead. And if they put Scalise up there and he loses a bunch of rounds of votes, I just don't think that helps. And yes, a year is a long way, but repetition is what people remember. Like that is how memories are ingrained in the brain. I think the Republicans have to be careful about imprinting this vision of themselves in the American psyche before the election.
I think that's, I think you're absolutely right. And I think I had never, I was never aware of normal people who cared so much about the activity on the House of Representatives as in January when McCarthy had that vote. And so I just think a repeat of that image could be not good for Republicans. But I also, I mean, we have a year to go. What else could be happening before then? And so it's just, it's, it's...
It's a lot to process. Also, Trump's campaign will probably be so, you know, off the wall. He'll be, you know, in his final stretches, desperate to win, knowing that it's the difference between spending time behind bars and, you know, the presidency. And I'm sure it'll just get more erratic and wild and it may overshadow everything. And none of this will matter at all. And him being on the top of the ticket will be all that matters.
this won't matter. We shall see. It is, it is. I'm, I just can't make any more predictions. It's really good to have you on, Abby, just breaking it all down in this very chaotic time. Who knows, in the next few days, maybe we will have a Speaker of the House. Thank you for having me, Tara.
Well, that was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win, even though we're not really sure who is going to win. I'm Tara Palmieri, and thanks to my producers, Devin Manzi and Connor Nevins. If you like this podcast, please rate it, share it, tell your friends all about it. If you want more of my reporting, go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. You can get 20% off with the discount code Tara20.
See you on Tuesday.