Today marked the start of the third straight week without a speaker of the House of Representatives. Republicans are still bitterly divided, with no end in sight to the standoff. The full House met today for the first time since Kevin McCarthy was deposed, in order to hold a vote on whether Jim Jordan would become the next speaker or not. Jordan failed in this effort, as 20 of his fellow Republicans voted for someone else. And the word now is that they won't be meeting for another vote until tomorrow morning, which means that Jordan has been unsuccessful in convincing the holdouts, at least for now.

Last week, Steve Scalise avoided the public humiliation of losing a speaker vote by refusing to call one until he had lined up the necessary 217 votes to win it. Within a day's time, he realized he was never going to achieve this, so he took his name out of contention. This left Jordan as the next candidate in line, but applying heavy pressure over the weekend didn't work out the way he had intended it to. Jordan, unlike Scalise, thought that holding a public vote would convince enough Republicans to get behind him, but this appears to have backfired on him.

It took Kevin McCarthy, the first speaker of the current Congress, 15 rounds of voting to secure the chair. Nobody knows if following the plan of "let's just keep voting" will eventually win the day for Jordan, but he seems to think it somehow will. We will see, in the second round, whether Jordan wins more votes to his side or (alternatively) whether he actually loses support. He got 200 votes today, but if that number starts shrinking then he might just be toast. Currently he is trying to twist some arms behind closed doors, but this isn't precisely the same situation as McCarthy faced. Some of the holdouts have such deep reservations about Jordan becoming speaker that no amount of promises or parliamentary goodies is probably going to convince them.

Jim Jordan is one of the most extreme members of the Republicans in Congress, and his brand is all about being the biggest hothead around. He is a fast-talker, steamrollering the conversation with an endless stream of unfounded accusations and conspiracy theories. In more normal times, such a person would never have a prayer of becoming speaker of the House, but these are not normal times. Donald Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image, and people like Jordan rising in the party ranks is a direct result of his influence. If Jordan does win control of the House, we can all expect a whole lot of drama and chaos under his leadership, while not much actually gets done (other than political posturing).

The best result, at this point, would be if Jordan continues to fall short of the 217 votes he needs, and eventually follows Scalise's lead and bows out of the running. That's about the only way any sort of sanity will be restored, as then the Republicans could start looking for a candidate who can get enough support -- which would likely mean someone a lot less contentious than either Scalise or Jordan. As of the moment, though, no such compromise candidate has appeared on the horizon.

One idea being floated would be to make the acting speaker pro tempore an actual elected speaker pro tempore, with a time limit built in. Perhaps they'll give Patrick McHenry the full power to lead the House, but only up until mid-November. This date has been bandied about in order to allow McHenry to do the heavy lifting of getting through the next round of the budget battles and cut some sort of deal to avoid a government shutdown right before Thanksgiving.

Then, after the adult work had been completed, the House Republicans could start their circular firing squad all over again. Given a month to campaign, perhaps one of them could secure enough support to be elected the normal way to the speaker's chair. But even if we just revert to where we are now -- endless rounds of voting, in other words -- at least the budget would be in place.

That certainly has some appeal, one would think. There's an alternative plan as well, but it has to be seen as far-fetched. All 212 Democrats voted for Hakeem Jeffries today, in a show of party unity. But there has been some outreach across the aisle, as some Democrats try to work with Republicans to get a more-acceptable speaker than Jordan. If the Republicans put up a moderate who agreed to a power-sharing arrangement, enough Democrats might vote in such a way as to allow him or her to win the speaker's chair. Democrats wouldn't agree to this scheme until they had an iron-clad promise to change the Rules Committee to allow bipartisan legislation to come to the House floor on a regular basis, though. If a bill was supported by enough Democrats and Republicans to pass, it would be allowed onto the floor for such a vote, even if the speaker didn't support it.

This could go a long way towards returning Congress to a functioning legislature. Compromises and deals could be worked out between Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate, and while nobody would get everything they wanted, everyone would get at least some of their priorities taken care of. Such an arrangement would make a lot of sense and could work quite well.

But as I said, it's a longshot. Most Republicans aren't all that interested in making Congress work, instead they favor bombast and histrionics. Either that, or they are just cravenly terrified of their own base voters, most of whom are fed a steady diet of bombast and histrionics daily, through right-wing media. Which means that the pressure campaign against the 20 holdouts might eventually work. If they've got everyone from Donald Trump to Sean Hannity excoriating the representatives who won't vote for Jordan, some of them might crack in the end.

Tomorrow's vote is scheduled to begin an hour before noon. Nobody knows what will happen. Jordan could pick up support, lose support, or hold steady. We could have a new speaker tomorrow, or the chaos could continue. One way or another, all of this proves one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: House Republicans are absolutely ungovernable. There is no one capable of bringing them together, because the chasms between the factions are so wide. Even if they do manage to elect a speaker, the job itself is just about impossible. Sooner or later one faction or another is going to get so incensed that they'll call for a new speaker. Perhaps this House will go down in history with "the most speaker votes in two years, ever." At this point, that is looking like a distinct possibility.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant