A majority of Republicans backed Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) for speaker, but not enough for him to actually get the gavel.
“We are a broken conference,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) told reporters after walking out of another meeting in the Capitol basement on Thursday.
Hours later, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the man Republicans nominated as their candidate for speaker just a day earlier, withdrew himself from consideration for the job, citing opposition from certain members of the Republican conference.
“There’s some folks that really need to look in the mirror over the next couple of days and decide, ‘Are we going to get it back on track,’ or are they going to try to pursue their own agenda,” Scalise told reporters.
“The world’s on fire. Our adversaries are watching what we do and quite frankly they like it,” Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said.
He expects his pro-Israel resolution to be the first thing to be voted on once the House reopens, but he said the clock is ticking to send Israel more weaponry to defend itself against Hamas. “We’re talking weeks. You can’t drag this out any longer.”
Their agenda is to grind the government to a halt and destroy public faith in the institution. That's been their agenda all along. They campaigned on the premise that our government is broken, and they've been actively trying to break it since they were elected. This has been the core Republican strategy since the 1950s.
Once they think they can get away with it, they'll sell off the government's functions to private interests because they feel that government should only exist to maintain an army and police force to enforce their property rights.
This is why the GOP are fundamentally unfit to govern. It would be like hiring a construction worker who intentionally dismantled or delayed the project every chance they got. That person isn't a builder with "different opinions," they are a saboteur and should be banned from ever working construction again.
Something like 74% of Americans dislike what the Republican party is doing. The poll isn't a slam dunk, since Democrats have like 40% approval and apparently more people want the House to solve problems than Biden -- but it's still encouraging to see that people are extremely sick of the GOP.