Goodbye Speaker Boehner, Hello Speaker Pelosi?

So I'm sure by now youve heard the news that, at the end of October, Speaker of the House John Boehner is resigning....not because of scandal or anything.....but simply because he believes the Republicans are too fractured for him to lead, and they cant get anything done.

So now of course, people are taking about who exactly is going to be the new Speaker.

Alot of the mainstream media says it will be House Majority Leader McCarthy. The Tea Party meanwhile is looking at Majority Whip Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Justin Amash, Trey Gowdy and others.

But their is one candidate no one is really looking at. Nancy Pelosi.

Now I know what your thinking, "isnt Pelosi a democrat?" Yep she is. Heres the thing, it doesnt matter.

See here's the constitution on who is allowed to be speaker "The House of Representatives shall chuse [sic] their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment."

Note there is no mention that the Speaker be of the majority party....or even a member of the House.

And House rules say that, to be speaker you need only win a majority of votes cast.....not a majority of the house itself.

Ok so what this means is pretty simple. On paper there are 435 members of Congress (excluding vacancies). A majority of this is 217.5 members, rounded up to 218.

So normally for purposes of a majority 218 is the number needed.


Now, at the moment there are  188 Democrats in the House....and while 1 or 2 may vote for themselves for speaker (as again, happened last time) there really isnt any other candidate on the democratic side (cause being the minority party and all being speaker usually isnt an opinion so no ones been trying for it). And given that, as a rule the Dems would all prefer Pelosi to any Republican, even the 1 or 2 who might otherswise vote for themselves will likely change their vote if it comes to controlling the house.

So Pelosi's 188 seems pretty solid....and with Boehners resignation from congress, lowering the number of members of congress to 434, and therefore the number needed for majority to 217, shes only 29 votes short of winning.

Now I know what your thinking, there is no way 29 Republicans will vote for Pelosi....and you may be right.....but here's the thing, they dont have to. They just have to not vote at all.

See in the case of majority needed to become speaker, the House only considers votes cast. So say, as with the last speaker election, 26 members choose not to vote. Which means for the purpose of this vote, its as if they dont exist.

This means in effect the House would have only 409....and the majority of that is 204.5...or 205 votes.

So anyone who got 205 votes would be speaker, even if though didnt get the majority of the whole house.

In fact, this is actually how Boehner won his speakership last time, as he only had 216 votes....so over the 205 needed to win due to non votes, but not over the 218 to actually have a majority of the entire house.

Now again there are going to be at a minimum 3 candidates for Speaker in the commingling election, Nancy Pelosi (for the democrats), Kevin McCarthy  (for the establishment republicans) and a Tea Party backed candidate. 

Now there are at least 70 members of the tea Party and its various offshoots in congress right now

Now there are only 247 Republicans in the House to begin with (excluding Boehners seat).

Now 247 Republicans - 70 tea party members (voting for their candidates) leaves 177 establishment republicans to vote for McCarthy.

Which is awkward, cause that would mean McCarthy got fewer votes than Pelosi's 188.....

And although that would also mean NO candidate would win (no ones got majority) it would also mean that the person closest to winning isnt of the majority party in congress.

You want to talk about sending a major, clear, signal that the GOP cant govern and is too fractured to do anything?...............that would be a pretty good one. And its not a signal the GOP wants to send at anytime, especially not in a presidential election cycle....and one in which the democrat message is based on the idea that the GOP cant govern.

Not to mention, even if the GOP won on later votes, this first "pelosi was top choice vote" will pretty much hamstring whoever the new speaker was, making them look like a weak compromise just to stop the Dems right out of the box.

So yea, that would be a situation to be avoided at all costs.

Which would be possible, if the GOP could unite around a single candidate....but the problem is, its likely the Tea Party will basically never vote for Boehners hand picked deputy (McCarthy), as they want nothing to do with Boehner or anything hes ever touched.  So the chances of an establishment GOP win arnt as good as they should be.

 And although the Tea Party groups are all claiming they will all back a single candidate, that would still leave that candidate with a base of support of only around 70. So that candidate would have to convince at least 119 other republicans to vote for them so that they could top Pelosi. And this assumes there is only other tea party candidate, if there is more than one the competition gets even stiffer to win people over.

In other words the situation is ripe for Establishment republicans, who cant bring themselves to vote for the tea party to sit at home and not show up. (after all its actually very hard to be effectively attacked for not voting on something....those attacks tend not to matter much in elections).

I also believe there are a few republicans who would rather see Pelosi as speaker (with a republican majority to limit her effectiveness on some issues) than a tea party speaker, and could use the "non vote" as cover should they decide McCarthy cant win.

And add to that any of the "losing tea party candidates" those being the ones the party didnt want to support when trying to get its Tea Party alternative to McCarthy, they may well decide not to vote either out of spite (this has also been known to happen, although is highly unlikely they are more likley to cast a vote for themselves anyways)

In short, especially coming off a previous speaker vote in which 26 members sat out...having 29 sit out isnt an unrealistic possibility.

Of course I am in no way actually saying Pelosi WILL be the next Speaker, or that this is what WILL happen, or that its the most probable outcome. I am saying only that, despite getting no coverage in the press so far, it is an actual realistic possibility that she will be. And that, at least at the moment (over a month away,), she is definitely the leading candidate in terms of the likely vote count.