We're all currently experiencing the punchline of an old political joke -- the one that says Republicans really should be honest in their campaign slogans, by running on: "Government doesn't work -- elect us and we'll prove it!" Here we are, living that proof.

The House of Representatives does not have an elected Republican leader. Republicans control a majority of the seats, but it is such a slim majority that any five of them deciding to throw a monkey wrench into the works paralyzes the entire party. At the beginning of this month, a giant monkey wrench was indeed thrown, as eight Republicans managed to dethrone their own speaker. Since that point, chaos has reigned in the House, and it doesn't seem like sanity is going to prevail any time soon.

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Once again, Jim Jordan's hopes of becoming speaker of the House of Representatives went down in flames today. In the final tally, Jordan flipped two Republicans from opposing him to supporting him and he also picked up a third vote from someone who was absent yesterday... but Jordan also lost four Republicans who flipped from supporting him to voting for someone else. Instead of 200 votes for Jordan and 20 Republican votes against, that adds up to 199 votes for Jordan and 22 GOP votes against. Or to put it more simply: Jordan is going backwards.

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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.

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Since today is kind of a waiting game in Washington, as pundits ponder whether Representative Jim Jordan can strongarm enough of his fellow House Republicans into voting for him for speaker or not (the vote will be held tomorrow), I thought it was a good day to check in with the state of the Republican presidential nomination race.

Or, to be strictly accurate, the race for second place on the Republican side. Donald Trump continues to absolutely dominate the field, as even his daily rolling average in national polling is approaching 60 percent. His closest competitor trails him by a whopping 45 points. That is not a race, that is a coronation. But operating on the principle of "Who knows what could happen?" it is still worth taking a look at how the others are doing, because there have been a few developments in the race for second.

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Personally, we could not think of a better day to elect the next speaker of the House, it being Friday the 13th and all. But the way things are going, that doesn't exactly seem like it's going to happen. As we all sit and watch the center ring of the Republican circus, just when you thought that tiny little clown car couldn't possibly have any more clowns in it... another one emerges!

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I admit that I've been something of a monomaniac this week, but the struggle for control of the Republican conference in the House of Representatives is absolutely fascinating to me, since it exposes the wide rifts within the party right now. I realize there's a brutal war being fought in Israel, but I have long shied away from commenting on that particular situation (because I feel I really don't have much of anything to add on the subject). And in domestic politics here at home, there's really only one thing going on: utter chaos in the speakerless House.

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Representative and current Majority Leader Steve Scalise has won his party's nomination for the job of speaker of the House of Representatives. He won a secret ballot held within his own caucus by the not-very-impressive margin of 113-99. But instead of the entire House immediately convening to hold a vote for the speaker's chair, they instead immediately went into recess. Nobody knows when such a vote will be held, meaning the chaos will continue for the time being.

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Republicans in the House of Representatives remain in disarray. That's probably not too surprising to anyone, since dysfunction is kind of their "brand" these days. But after the past few days, this is a lot more concerning to a lot more people. We should know, within the next two days or so, whether this is going to be a major impediment to American government or just another bump in the GOP's rocky road.

What has made it all more real is a new war raging in Israel. All of a sudden the fact that one house of Congress is paralyzed isn't a matter of: "Oh, just don't visit the National Parks during the shutdown, everything else will be fine," but rather of not being able to provide American military aid when it is needed. The consequences are far more dire, obviously.

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Robert F. Kennedy Junior announced today that he is dropping out of the Democratic Party's primary race and will instead mount an independent bid for the White House. Both Republicans and Democrats are already worrying over how this will affect the race next year, since third-party bids can often act as spoilers. But next year, depending on what state you live in, you may have not just three but instead four, five, or perhaps even more names on the presidential ballot.

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We've finally gotten to the point where even the headline-writers in the mainstream media had to admit the reality -- which runs 180 degrees counter to their propensity to magnify every little squabble among Democrats -- and finally write a few: "Republicans In Disarray" headlines. Because this was the week it became unavoidable. The Republican civil war broke out into the open in a big way, as they made history by deposing a speaker of the House of Representatives for the first time ever. From this point forward, we will be referring to just Representative Kevin McCarthy, since that's all he now is. And maybe not even that, if the rumors he's thinking about stepping down entirely turn out to be true.

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