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.

This does not bode especially well for Jordan. It really should be the death knell for his chances of leading the chamber. But we all saw Kevin McCarthy bludgeon his way to winning a vote after losing a whopping 14 times, so Jordan must somehow think the same could happen for him too. And Jordan's whole political persona is being a fighter -- he'll fight harder and stronger than anyone else, dammit! -- which makes the process of Jordan gracefully backing down look (to him and his supporters) like giving up and generally being a loser.

Watching from the sidelines, it feels like we are nearing some sort of resolution. It wouldn't surprise me if the Republicans came up with some sort of answer either just before the weekend or perhaps just after. We've already wasted most of three legislative weeks on this navel-gazing exercise, and frustrations are running high.

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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.

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.

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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.

For House Republicans, 2023 is the year Festivus came early. It's hard not to conclude this, after yet another session of what can only be called "the airing of the grievances." Upon exiting today's GOP-only closed-doors meeting, here's what one of them had to say:

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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.

[Editorial note: We had read an earlier report that it would have taken a two-thirds vote within the Republican Caucus to win the nomination, which was simply not true (as Scalise's bare majority shows). We regret repeating this error in previous columns. Mea culpa.]

The battle between Scalise and the other contender, Representative Jim Jordan, was pretty fierce and included Donald Trump endorsing Jordan as well as reports that Kevin McCarthy was privately peeved at Scalise for not doing more to help him save his own speakership -- but even with all that, Scalise emerged victorious.

Jordan, in an incredible display of party unity (which was rather surprising, for him), then privately met with Scalise and reportedly offered to not only throw his support behind Scalise but also to be the one to give him his nominating speech on the floor. This might go a long way towards convincing all of Jordan's supporters to also shift their support to Scalise. But Scalise can only lose four votes from his fellow Republicans -- if five or more vote for someone else, we may see multiple speaker votes the same way we did in January. This time, however, it appears that the wheeling and dealing for votes might happen behind the scenes. If the House stays in recess until the Republicans can put together an actual majority for Scalise, then we won't have to endure vote after vote on the House floor. We may have to wait awhile for that floor vote to happen, however.

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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.

The military aid isn't even the point, really. It is more that America cannot speak politically with one voice even when it is sorely needed on the world's stage. Instead of looking to us for leadership, people in other countries now look and see paralysis. Republicans used to care about stuff like this -- and this week will be a test of whether they still do or not.

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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.

Last week, Cornel West also announced an independent bid for the presidency, after flirting with an attempt to be the Green Party's nominee. And the group No Labels has tens of millions of dollars in the bank which they are going to use to get their party on the ballot in as many states as they can, although they don't really have a candidate or even any sort of concrete political agenda at this point. Politicians such as Senator Joe Manchin and Utah's Jon Huntsman are reportedly considering vying for the No Labels nomination. And then there will also be the eventual nominees of both the Green and Libertarian Parties as well. So there should be numerous "third parties" for many voters to choose from.

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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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There are plenty of things I could be writing about today, not least among them the horrifying and completely laughable notion of making Donald Trump speaker of the House, but I decided to focus in on the "laughable" part instead. Because I, for one, am immensely pleased that late-night comedy shows are back on the air every night (and, starting this weekend, on Saturday night as well).

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