Subject: Re: Speaker's Election
Really...it's obvious enough people don't want him. Choose someone else.

A fair chunk of the party doesn't want to. The stakes are higher than that.

There's a bit more at issue than just the identity of the Speaker. The anti-McCarthy faction wants to increase their ability to affect the direction of the GOP over the next two years. Letting them pick a Speaker gives them a vast amount of power over that Speaker. No matter who it is. Winning the fight is what gives them the power, not whether there's any real policy difference between McCarthy and the non-McCarthy Speaker. Sure, some of them probably have personal beef with McCarthy. But at the end of the day, they benefit enormously from being able to walk into the Speaker's office and remind him that they put him in that chair - and can take him out.

For some of the party, this is in some ways a Fight Worth Having - a test of how much power is going to be given to/seized by the Freedom Caucus. If you let them win this fight, you've pretty much lost every future legislative fight - over the debt ceiling, over spending bills, over any must-pass legislation.

That's because what these folks want - what they need - is to hobble the ability of the Speaker to pass bills with Democratic votes. They have a few dozen members, which is enough to stop any bill that Democrats also object to. But it's not enough to stop bills that Republicans support and could get Democratic votes (like, say, a bill to raise the debt ceiling). They need to be able to force the Speaker to not bring them to the floor. They need to be able to force the Speaker to let them lard those bills up with poison-pill amendments. They need a veto.

Albaby