House Speaker Impasse

The decisions that run the House, especially the election of the Speaker, belong to the majority.  When the majority fails to vote as a majority, it ceases to be one.  On Tuesday, eight Republicans stole that decision from the Republican conference and stole the House majority from the voters who elected it.

What is to be done?  Each day that goes by without a Speaker, the House is paralyzed to act on the dangers bearing down on us.  Each day brings us closer to a power-sharing arrangement that will move the House sharply to the left and eliminate the only political counterweight in our elected government to the woke left.

No candidate for Speaker is likely to receive 96 percent of the Republican Conference vote required by this new precedent.  Anyone who can achieve this feat will be captive to the whims of any five members with a grievance on any particular day.  Any Speaker elected under these terms would be unstable, weak and transient.

The only workable outcome is to restore Kevin McCarthy as Speaker under party rules that respect and enforce the right of the majority party to elect him.  This depends entirely on several of the dissidents to disenthrall themselves from their decision and to repair the damage before it is too late.  I appeal to them to act while there is still time.