House Republicans, in a whirlwind of chaos today, first elected a nominee to be speaker and then refused to give him the support he would have needed -- so he dropped out. It was a head-snapping day for politics-watchers, that's for sure.

For those of you who weren't glued to the news feeds today, I will try to give a play-by-play rundown of what just transpired. The short answer is: Tom Emmer won the Republican nomination for speaker of the House on the last possible round of voting, only to withdraw his nomination four hours later after realizing there were around two dozen Republicans who would never vote for him on the House floor. Which leaves us right back where we were three weeks ago on October 4th -- a speakerless House and a Republican conference that has zero party unity and no acknowledged leadership whatsoever.

After Jim Jordan's failure to gain the 217 votes necessary to be elected speaker last week, the field was thrown wide open again within the Republican conference. Nine members immediately threw their hats in the ring. For the record, here they are:

• Jack Bergman
• Byron Donalds
• Tom Emmer
• Kevin Hern
• Mike Johnson
• Dan Meuser
• Gary Palmer
• Pete Sessions
• Austin Scott

Last night, they all addressed a closed-door meeting of the whole GOP House conference, to make their case. During the meeting, however, Dan Meuser announced he was voluntarily withdrawing his bid, which left eight candidates.

This morning, one more had bitten the dust, as Gary Palmer also announced he was dropping out. This left seven.

The way the rules work in the Republican conference, to win the nomination for speaker requires a simple majority of the votes cast. If nobody reaches that threshold, then the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped and another round of voting commences. With seven candidates, this means a maximum of six rounds of voting (the first with all seven candidates, the second with only six... all the way down to the sixth round, which would only have two candidates).

Here is how it all went:

First round of voting:

78 -- Emmer

34 -- Johnson

29 -- Donalds

27 -- Hern

18 -- Scott

16 -- Bergman

8 -- Sessions

[Note: there were five votes for other candidates and one "Present" vote... these extraneous votes weren't reported for every round of voting (from the source we used), but it's a safe assumption that there were a handful in each of them.]

Second round of voting:

(Pete Sessions is dropped, having come in last place)

90 -- Emmer

37 -- Johnson

33 -- Donalds

31 -- Hern

14 -- Scott

7 -- Bergman

Third round of voting:

(Jack Bergman is dropped, having come in last place)

100 -- Emmer

43 -- Johnson

32 -- Donalds

26 -- Hern

12 -- Scott

Fourth round of voting:

(Austin Scott is dropped, having come in last place)

107 -- Emmer

56 -- Johnson

25 -- Donalds

25 -- Hern

Fifth round of voting:

(Byron Donalds and Kevin Hern both dropped, having tied for last place)

117 -- Emmer

97 -- Johnson

[Technical note: The eagle-eyed mathematicians among you may have noticed that, by these numbers alone, Emmer should have won in the fourth round, as he had 107 votes to 106 for Johnson, Donalds, and Hern -- but that's where those extraneous votes for other people can make a difference.]

As you can see, this was a pretty brutal process for Emmer to have to endure to gain the nomination. The only reason it didn't go to the full six rounds is that there was a statistical fluke -- a tie in the fourth round -- that led to two candidates being dropped at once. Meaning it did actually go to the final round, where there were only two candidates running. That is about as far from a show of strength as you can get, folks.

Emmer then immediately called for a second vote, to gauge how much support he'd actually get on the House floor. Unlike the nomination votes (which were held by secret ballot), these votes were given in a roll call. Nobody seems to have the exact number of Republicans who voted against Emmer in this round, but it was "more than 20" up to "about 25," so let's just call it two dozen. It was also reported five people voted "Present" rather than backing or explicitly rejecting Emmer.

The meeting adjourned, but not for long. Emmer decided against the humiliation of moving immediately to the House floor for a vote (which he obviously would have lost) and instead decided to reconvene the conference in an attempt to win over the holdouts.

During the intervening time, reports filtered back to the media about what was going on. Here's a succinct wrap-up of the opposition Emmer faced:

Here are some of the concerns expressed by the more than two dozen Republicans who backed someone other than speaker designate Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) in a public but closed-door roll call vote of House Republicans, according to a lawmaker in the room who was granted anonymity to discuss a private meeting:

• A few disapproved of his vote to back same-sex marriage.
• A few don't like his vote to certify the 2020 presidential election.
• A few are concerned with his previous support of a popular-vote plan that would eliminate the Electoral College.
• A few don't like the fact that he's on the House leadership team.
• Up to eight are still "big mad" about Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) losing the speakership vote.

Some of the opposition was pretty personal. This came from Representative Jim Banks, the Republican Emmer beat out (in a very heated contest) to become Majority Whip:

The left-flank of our conference blocked Speaker-designee Jim Jordan then nominated the single most liberal member of leadership. They are holding our conference hostage and pushing Republicans to betray our voters and abandon our promises to the American people. I won't go along with it.

But the real kiss of death was when Donald Trump weighed in -- while Emmer was meeting with the holdouts in a last-ditch attempt to win them over. Trump was scathing in his denouncement of Emmer, calling him (among other things) a "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) and said Emmer had never really fully backed "breadth and scope of MAGA." This likely sealed Emmer's fate, if it wasn't already obvious.

So Emmer, like Steve Scalise before him, bowed to the inevitable rather than endure the humiliation of putting his party's disunity on full display in a House floor vote (as Jim Jordan did, three times in a row). Emmer announced, a mere four hours and ten minutes after he had secured the nomination, that he was dropping his bid for House speaker.

This makes a clean sweep of House Republican leadership. The top three positions in this hierarchy have now all been rejected by their caucus (or enough of them to guarantee a floor vote loss, at any rate). The radicals have spoken, and the establishment has been rendered powerless.

So where does all this leave us? Well, right back at square one. Republicans will now go through the same process all over again and vote on a new nominee. As of right now, it looks like Mike Johnson is the frontrunner, having lasted until the final round of voting with Emmer, but who knows what the 100-plus Republicans who backed Emmer will do next time? It will quite likely be another free-for-all, but this circle might remain unsquarable. If no mainstream GOP candidate can win over the MAGA Chaos Caucus and no MAGA candidate can win over the moderates from battleground districts, then no Republican may be able to become speaker.

That's a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Republican Party these days. The party itself seems pretty powerless and "party unity" has now become almost a punchline when talking about the Republicans. Another punchline this week (uttered by more than one House Republican) is that "only Jesus could get to 217," but I highly doubt that this is even true -- because I could see a whole lot of Republicans refusing to back Jesus once they learned what he actually had to say about things like taxes and helping the poor... that's my guess, at any rate.

About the only good thing you can say about the House Republicans right now is that at least they've sped up the process. What took us a week last time around took only the better part of one day this time. It also took a speaker nominee with the ability to realize the futility of the situation and the willingness not to keep beating his head against a brick wall of opposition.

[Editorial Note: In fact, the process has sped up so much that it is already underway again (a fact I wasn't aware of when writing the rest of this article). As I write this, the Republicans are reconvening to hold a new speaker nomination election tonight, and people are already tossing their hats in the ring.]

At this point, it is impossible to even predict how many more rounds of this we will be subjected to. At some point, the only answer may be for Democrats to work with the reasonable Republicans to create some sort of power-sharing agreement. If the Republicans are so deadlocked that there is no possible speaker candidate who can get 217 Republican votes, then that is going to be the only way out of this mess. It might just be a question of how long it takes those GOP moderates to realize this, in the end.

For now, with a speed equalling the derailment of Steve Scalise's speaker candidacy, we offer up this epitaph for Tom Emmer's bid: another one bites the dust.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant