Kevin McCarthy's 218 problem

[applegrove]

This discussion thread was locked by EarlG (a host of the DU4 Bug Reports forum).

November 16, 2022  | by Chris Cillizza and Shania Shelton CNN email (so I put up the whole thing)

Kevin McCarthy's 218 problem 

"SNIP.......

House Republicans voted for Kevin McCarthy as their leader on Tuesday. But that victory contained a dangerous omen for the California Republican as he tries to become the next speaker of the House.

McCarthy won the leadership vote over Arizona GOP Rep. Andy Biggs by a 188-31 margin. Which is the problem.

CNN has yet to project who won control of the House in the midterm elections. But if Republicans take the majority, as expected, it will be a narrow one. As of Wednesday, CNN projected Republicans will control 217 seats compared to 208 for the Democrats. If the current leaders of the 10 uncalled races wind up winning, that would leave Republicans with 221 seats.

Under that scenario, McCarthy would only be able to afford to lose three Republican votes in the new Congress to secure a majority and become speaker, presuming Democrats remain united in opposition. 

That would mean McCarthy could only lose one out of every 10 members who cast a ballot for Biggs. Which is almost zero margin for error.

Now, it's worth noting here that voting against McCarthy in a secret-ballot election among the Republican conference isn't the same thing as voting against him to be speaker on the House floor in January.

It's possible that the members who voted against him -- particularly the members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus -- did so as a way of voicing their concerns and getting McCarthy's attention.

McCarthy can also take some solace in fact that past House speakers initially received fewer than 218 votes in their intraparty elections. Democrats nominated Nancy Pelosi for speaker by a 203-32 vote in 2018, and Republicans nominated Paul Ryan by a 200-43 vote in 2015 -- though both enjoyed larger majorities at the time than McCarthy likely will. 

McCarthy now has the better part of two months to change his opponents' minds. But, man, that's a lot of minds that need changing -- even if former President Donald Trump, who McCarthy has assiduously courted for years, leans on the Freedom Caucus to back him.

If McCarthy is not able to do that, it would be the second time in less than a decade his bid for House speaker came up short. In October 2015, McCarthy dropped out of the race to replace Speaker John Boehner when it became clear that he didn't have the votes to win.

We're not there yet. McCarthy is still the odds-on favorite to serve as speaker,  assuming Republicans retake the House majority. That's at least in part because there is no credible challenger to him. (Sorry Andy Biggs!)

But if McCarthy can't get to 218 votes in January, you can be sure someone (maybe Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan) will step into that breach. Politics, after all, abhors a vacuum

.......SNIP"

Admin extra spaces between paragraphs happened. I fixed it to be one line.

[EarlG]

1. Hi there

Could you be a bit more specific? You say extra spaces happened... was that while you were writing the post, or when previewing, or...?

If you could give me as much information as possible, that will help us to figure out what happened.

Oh, edited to add: if you copied and pasted that text from an email, that could DEFINITELY explain why there were line breaks in weird places. Emails tend to have a fixed width and the line breaks can get out of whack when they're copied and pasted. Try test posting an article from a regular web page and see if you get the same problem.

[applegrove]

2. Okay.

After I pasted the body of the text there were extra blank lines between paragraphs. I was not writing it.

[applegrove]

3. Pasted from political wire and it looks good.

Ukraine Hurting from Russian Attacks on Energy Systems
November 16, 2022 at 6:16 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 27 Comments

“The Ukrainian government is warning Western allies that it is anticipating increased Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure in the coming days and that Kyiv does not have enough replacement parts to bring heat and power back online if those occur,” Politico reports.

“Ukrainian officials have in recent days asked their American counterparts and more than half a dozen European countries for assistance preparing for a prolonged period with limited electricity and gas — a scenario Kyiv expects to complicate fighting on the ground and displace civilians.”

[applegrove]

4. I see

Oh spell check works. Grrrreat!