Trump loses AGAIN, his pick for Speaker LOSES Republican vote

Republicans have failed to coalesce behind a choice for speaker of the House with Donald Trump's pick, Jim Jordan, not getting the support of the Republican Conference. Steve Scalise, getting the support of the Republican Conference and now raising the questions of where do Republicans go from here? Another loss for Donald Trump. Again, this incredible contrast where he controls the vast majority of the Republican primary, but seems increasingly to be ignored by actual Republicans in the House of Representatives. And then, of course, the practical question, when will there be a speaker of the House? What can the House even do absent a speaker? The answer is not very much. And so we will start with the first element of this report, Washington Post. Republicans failed to coalesce around speaker choice, leaving House in limbo. Steve Scalise was nominated by a majority of the conference, but he did not have the support of 217 lawmakers needed to claim the gavel on the floor. So what happens now? House Republicans were on the verge of open revolt Wednesday after the ideologically fractious conference. That's an understatement. Ideologically fractious conference failed to coalesce around a speaker, leaving the chamber rudderless and leaderless for an eighth day. The inability of House Republicans to agree on who will leave them, lead them, has left them in an effective standstill since Kevin McCarthy was ousted, unable to consider any legislation to aid Israel in its war against Hamas, pass any appropriations bills to avoid a potential government shutdown in mid-November. Now, importantly, Majority Leader Steve Scalise was nominated for speaker by a majority of Republicans during a closed door secret ballot early Wednesday. But a significant number of Republicans from across the ideological spectrum said they planned to protest his official election on the floor. Jim Jordan, Scalise's challenger, initially refused to say he would back Scalise on the House floor. A spokesperson said Jordan would back Scalise and offered to give a nominating speech on his behalf. So Jim Jordan has some serious problems. And much like we've been talking about how becoming president may have been the worst business decision that Donald Trump ever made for himself and for his family. Jim Jordan's past, as Newsweek now writes, comes back to haunt him as Ohio state wrestlers speak out. Let me remind you what this is all about. Jim Jordan, when he worked at Ohio State, was there at the same time as a horrible sexual assault scandal involving a guy named Dr. Strauss. The belief is that Dr. Strauss, I don't have the numbers in front of me, sexually assaulted and harassed over 100, close to 200 different wrestlers. And while there is no allegation that Jim Jordan was involved in the assaults, there are multiple allegations, including now from former wrestlers, that there is no way in hell that Jim Jordan didn't know it. And what we know is that Jim Jordan did nothing about it, didn't blow the whistle, didn't do anything to stop it. This has been sort of dragging Jim Jordan in not the most visible ways for a while. And now with Jim Jordan at the forefront, although not winning the Republican vote yesterday for speaker, this is becoming a bigger and bigger story. The degree to which this will be what prevents Jordan from being speaker, I actually don't think it is going to be the thing that prevents him from being speaker. But this gets us to our sort of next question. Even Trump's endorsement, not enough to get you the speakership at this time. And it raises more and more questions about Trump's lack of influence. There is this interesting dichotomy. There's an interesting contrast. Some might call it a contradiction, although I don't believe that that is the case. It seems to me and it has seemed this way for a while that Republican elected officials are much I hate to make it such a simplistic thing I do, but I think for our purposes, the terms will serve us. The Republican elected officials, on average, are much smarter than Republican voters. Republican elected officials are much more crafty and nuanced than Republican voters. And so while in a public facing way, we have seen both most Republican officials and the vast majority of Republican voters get behind Donald Trump going back to when Trump started running for president and became the nominee in 2016. Publicly, everybody's always Trump's good. We like Trump. Trump's the leader of the party. Privately, many Republicans realize the disaster that Trump has been for them. Many Republican voters don't realize that. And that's the split. And so you have a situation today where around 60 percent of the Republican electorate still plans to vote for Donald Trump in the Republican primary, despite the civilly liable rape, despite the indictments, despite attacking allies and praising authoritarians and having this dictator wannabe situation, despite all of it, six out of 10 Republican primary voters seem to still plan to support Donald Trump. On the other hand, while Donald Trump does still have significant support in the Republican Party among the elected officials, his endorsements and his suggestions and his directions are worth less and less over time. And here we have another example of this as we see Trump say, hey, I like Jim Jordan. That's the guy you should vote for. And the Republican Conference, not by an overwhelming number, but certainly by by clear majority saying we don't care what Trump says. We don't care who Trump wants. We're going not with Jim Jordan, but rather with Steve Scalise. So this is going to be an interesting few days. When will we have a speaker of the House again? I don't know. I want to remind many of you that for many on the right, not having a speaker of the House is not actually a problem because remember, there's an asymmetry here. We on the left have usually a pretty clear idea of what we want government doing, and it's usually something we want government doing stuff on the right. You actually have a contingent of Republicans that sees it as a good thing if Congress just can't do anything and Congress can do very little when they don't have a speaker of the House. And so the urgency that some of us feel to actually get a House speaker, even if it's going to be a lunatic, just so some basic things can be accomplished and hopefully a government shutdown can be avoided because it just hurts the people at the end of the day. We may have we have more of a sense of urgency than Republicans do. So we will continue following it. 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