217 Votes for Jesus, Mary, or Joseph
And Political Jesus. And Samuel L. Jackson twice in one week.
Cassidy Steele Dale writes to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.
And one of those ways is to just… just… OK…
A short update to my newsletter from only two days ago where I laid out some developments that may shake out this fall so we can forecast the months and years to come. The three I wrote about there are (1) the GOP Speaker kerfuffle in the House, (2) whether we’ll have a shutdown of the U.S. Government as a result, and (3) what we may be able to learn from Virginia’s state elections in a couple of weeks.
The last 48 hours may have told us a lot about (1) and (2). And none of it is galloping shock but let’s explain it and walk it forward.
While it was pretty apparent earlier in the week, it’s looks undeniable now: No Republican can get the 217 Republican votes necessary to become Speaker of the House.
Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska keeps spitting out some version of Jesus Christ couldn’t get 217 votes in the Republican conference right now in front of reporters.
Why is this happening? It’s not just because of the obvious, it’s also because of longer-term changes happening in the country, and Republicans’ political, worldview, and theological reactions to it. We may be to the point where some Republicans don’t just object to Democrats, and/or fear being primaried or declared apostate by their own base, they may fear they will go to hell or sacrifice their integrity if they change their positions or approaches or compromise with Democrats.
But now our problem is this: Republicans in the House must compromise with Democrats to elect a Speaker. Either (1) they have to peel off a few Democrats to vote with them for a GOP moderate (really not likely), (2) a few Republicans have to peel off to vote for Jeffries (and be shot dead by dawn, politically or ballistically), or (3) the Republican conference has to approach the Democrats hat in hand to ask them for all of their votes to elect a Speaker (which may seem laughably impossible but may be the most likely future).
What seems abjectly impossible — beyond reason — can become the most likely future. It happens all the time.
Nine or so Republicans in the House are considering running for Speaker and, if this trajectory and these constraints continue, it will be undeniable in another week or two to a critical mass of that conference that they can’t elect anyone at all. Without Democrats’ help.
It’s also clear that Democrats in the House know this and are waiting for the Republican conference to do the math. They’ve been content to let the Republicans squirm and Jeffries has been playing coy with reporters.
So now that Scalise and Jordan are out and McHenry has said no, the next however-long will just be an ongoing internal scrum among Republicans until they accept reality.
This means we’ve probably entered a plateau where, as a futurist, I won’t have to pay close attention to this for a while. I’ll just check the headlines every so often and reengage my futurist brain on this once a breakthrough occurs. (Plateaus are how futurists retain their sanity: once we hit a point where change can only happen within a category or frame we don’t have to think very hard about it, once something starts happening that’s apt to break or transform that category we really engage.)
So actually right now we may be in a waiting game. The question is when will Republicans in the House approach Democrats hat in hand: before or after a shutdown starts.
This isn’t likely to happen quickly (but it could) because (1) Republicans in the House need to exhaust all their Speaker candidates first, (2) get livid about it, (3) scream for more days, (4) go through the rest of the five stages of grief, then (5) argue about what they’ll ask of Jeffries, (6) Jeffries will respond “That’s a nice first offer — try again,” (7) more GOP screaming behind closed doors, (8) somebody punches out Matt Gaetz in the Cloak Room, and (9) we wind up with Democrats helping to overwhelmingly elect somebody like McHenry (who House Democrats already think well of), and (10) we get a House that limps along until 2024 with no transformative legislation passed in the meantime but is beholden to Democrats and we get to keep the lights on and Israel and Ukraine aid-ed until (11) something structurally changes within the House Republican conference or the numbers in the House change due to the elections next year, or both.
The next question is whether all this can happen before midnight November 17 when the government shuts down and right now I doubt Republicans could find Political Jesus that fast. But I may be wrong.
Regardless — before or during a shutdown — this same cycle happens again. on every. single. piece of legislation. but in shorter cycles as Jeffries, the GOP Speaker, and whoever punched out Matt Gaetz stand up and look at whichever holdouts are holding out like:
And by the time this settles down it will be about President’s Day or something and we can all buy mattresses. Because by then we’ll need a nap.