Steve Scalise withdraws from House Speaker race
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) has withdrawn from the race for Speaker of the House despite clinching the nomination by House Republicans just a few days prior. Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman provides insight into who Democrat lawmakers could possibly throw their support behind as a Republican House Speaker.
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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
Video Transcript
AKIKO FUJITA: Well, Congressman Steve Scalise throwing a curveball in the search for a new House Speaker.
Scalise announcing he is withdrawing from the race for Speaker.
With this, paving the way for Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan to make another run for the position.
Here with more, let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman.
Rick, the magic number is 217, right?
I mean, who's closest right now to getting that?
RICK NEWMAN: Nobody, maybe you should try for the job, Akiko.
Or maybe they should just have every Republican try on-- you know, one day after another.
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So Steve Scalise was-- was the Republican nominee for like five seconds because in an internal vote just among Republicans, he got more votes than-- than Jim Jordan did.
But-- but he didn't have any pathway to getting all the votes he needed.
And just as a reminder to people, assuming that there are no Democratic votes for-- for a Republican Speaker, which is custom basically, then whoever the Republican is needs every vote-- every Republican vote, except for four.
That person can only afford to lose four votes because Republicans have such a narrow minority.
And I think it was eight Republicans who voted against McCarthy.
So those eight holdouts have not signaled that they are willing to give their vote to another candidate.
And I mean, we could just keep going on and on through all these scenarios.
But I mean, the bottom line here is that we do not seem any closer to having a Speaker of the House than we did, whatever it was, 9 or 10 days ago, when Republicans fired their own leader, Kevin McCarthy.
And there's important stuff that Congress needs to do that it's not doing.
AKIKO FUJITA: Rick, you know, ultimately this is about the fractures that's happening within the Republican Party or the House GOP.
But where do the Democrats stand right now?
I mean, are there any names out there within the GOP that they could potentially throw their weight around or throw their weight behind?
RICK NEWMAN: I don't think it's a matter of the name.
It is a matter of-- I mean, that is a way out of this.