By Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking | Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The House Republican majority is stuck, one week after the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with lawmakers unable to coalesce around a new leader in a stalemate that threatens to keep Congress partly shuttered indefinitely.
On Tuesday evening, two leading contenders for the gavel, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, were scheduled to address colleagues behind closed doors at a candidate forum, but they appeared to be splitting the vote.
McCarthy, meanwhile, was openly ready to reclaim the gavel he just lost, but was seen by many as a longshot option unlikely to win back the handful of hardliners who just ousted him.
“This has been going on for days. Members want to come together,” Scalise said late Monday at the Capitol. “We’ve got to get back on track.”
House Republicans took the majority aspiring to operate as a team, and run government more business-like, but have drifted far from that goal. Just 10 months in power, the historic ouster of their House speaker — the first in U.S. history — and the prolonged infighting it has unleashed is undercutting the Republicans’ ability to govern at a time of crisis at home and abroad.
Now as House Republicans push ahead toward snap elections Wednesday aimed at finding a new nominee for speaker, the hard-right flank coalition of lawmakers that ousted McCarthy has shown what an oversized role a few lawmakers can have in choosing the successor.
“This is a hard conference to lead,” said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., “A lot of free agents.”
Both Scalise and Jordan are working furiously to shore up support. Both are easily winning over dozens of supporters, but it’s unclear if either can amass the 217 votes likely needed in a floor vote that could come as soon as Wednesday.
Both conservatives from the right flank, neither man is the heir apparent to McCarthy.
Scalise as the second-ranking Republican…
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