The new Republican era of House control is going swimmingly, no?

Let’s recap. The first ballot for House Speaker failed to elect Kevin McCarthy, who earlier in the day insisted that he wouldn’t step down no matter how many ballots it took. It takes a majority to win the Speaker, and those dissenters means we’ll head to a second ballot soon. Breibart’s Joel Pollak summed up the situation well:

Right now, with voting for Speaker still ongoing, no candidate will have a majority, and @RepJeffries could have a plurality (tho not enough to win). 2nd ballot likely. Republicans look like idiots; Democrats, unified in opposition. Possibility of a Democrat being elected Speaker

— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) January 3, 2023

It’s a possibility, but not a very strong one. To get to 218, Jeffries would have to get five Republicans to vote for him, and that would be a nuclear bomb within the GOP. In fact, we may already be approaching nuclear status within the House Republican caucus. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) angrily declared the Freedom Caucus dissenters not as opponents but outright “enemies” in an interview with CNN.

“They’re very clearly looking for notoriety over principle,” Crenshaw said, and that was maybe the nicest thing he said about them:

Rep. Dan Crenshaw on bloc of hardliners determined to block McCarthy: "They are enemies now," he told me. "They have made it clear that they prefer a Democrat agenda than a Republican one." pic.twitter.com/w0LFmbFEED

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 3, 2023

Crenshaw told Raju the opponents lost the debate over who should lead the party in the House and that “should have been the end of it.”

“But if you’re a narcissist and you believe that your opinion is so much more than everyone else’s, then you’ll keep going. And you’ll threaten to tear down the team for the benefit of the Democrats just because of your own sense of self-importance,” he said.

He said he and other Republicans will only vote for McCarthy and they are more “stubborn” than their opponents.

In other words, we have a game of political chicken, and both sides are accelerating.

So can Jeffries actually win the speakership? Again, it’s possible if the people who think Kevin McCarthy is so insufficiently conservative that they’ll vote to give control of the House to a, um … progressive Democrat in the mold of Nancy Pelosi. That’ll own the Establishment, no? It seems like an impossibility to me, but then again, this all seems pointless already.

Jeffries wouldn’t last long as Speaker anyway. Republicans would immediately move to vacate the chair (MTV) and start all this over again, and they would do that over and over again. If the Freedom Caucus holdouts won’t vote to sustain an MTV against Jeffries, then why would they insist on keeping it to use against a fellow Republican? If Jeffries was smart, he’d instruct half his caucus to leave and hold another quorum call before the second ballot to bring the majority threshold from 218 to 160-ish. McCarthy would get stuck with a fractious speakership while leaving this open feud unresolved, at least for a while.

We’ll see if the dissenters change positions on the second ballot, having made their point. In the meantime, you just know that Jeffries and Pelosi are having a ball today. Jeffries ended up outpolling McCarthy on the first ballot, and that’s a historical smack that will never go away. Great job, everyone.

Update: Second verse, same as the first? Pretty much:

McCarthy now poised to fall short on the second ballot. (The 1923 speaker vote went to nine ballots). There are now 5 Republicans voting for Jim Jordan.

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 3, 2023

Jordan now has seven, which clinches a third ballot.