There’s a dog not barking here that may be obvious but is worth mentioning. It’s not just that Donald Trump’s low-energy endorsement of Kevin McCarthy isn’t carrying the day. It’s that Trump’s name hasn’t really come up at all. Lauren Boebert, in her nominating speech, name-checked him to note how his endorsement of McCarthy was not swaying her. But that’s the exception that proves the rule. Not in the sense that she’s not taking Trump’s guidance but because she’s even discussing him. Trump’s wishes, feelings, threats, anger and really anything else about him are just completely absent from this entire drama. In a way that is the biggest story here.

I thought it was worth making a simple point. The spectacle of the last two days is an embarrassment. The House GOP and really the GOP generally has shown itself incapable of governing in the most basic sense. But I’ve heard some suggestions that this is sort of a lo-fi reenactment of the events of two years ago: more chaos, more craziness, more dysfunction. It’s worth pushing back a bit on that appraisal. This is democracy. If anything there is something a bit invigorating about seeing vote after vote where the outcome, immediate or eventual, isn’t at all clear. One vote, followed by various frenzied negotiation, another vote, followed by more.

When we talk about the GOP as a failed state run by assorted warlords think about stuff like this.

Today’s and yesterday’s events were predictable, unbelievable and hilarious all at once. One increasingly common refrain from analysts and reporters is that the issue between Kevin McCarthy and his now-20-plus rebels is really personal. They don’t trust him, will never trust him. Perhaps. But this personalizing analysis ignores the larger dynamic that has been unfolding in the Republican Party for more than a decade. We might trace the roots of the present moment to Barry Goldwater, to Newt Gingrich, to the Tea Party, or to Donald Trump. But the key turning point here is 2008 and 2009 when the GOP ceased to function as a center-right party of government and became something more like the sectarian revanchist parties that have long existed on the margins of European parliamentary politics. 

But the U.S. isn’t a parliamentary democracy. Its constitutional structure makes it all but inevitable that two coalitional parties will trade power back and forth. This shift in the GOP happened along with a deep fracture, and an inevitable one in an American context. The House Freedom Caucus was nominally formed in 2015. But it was an institutionalization of the Tea Party radicalism that had its roots in the shift from Republican to Democratic rule in 2008 and 2009. 

2:46 PM: I’m realizing that putting Jordan into nomination was a bit different. It was clear that the plan was already to consolidate behind Jordan. That I think is because even though Jordan is a toxic figure on the national scene (founder of the Freedom Caucus) he seems like someone who more members might actually see as an alternative to McCarthy. Biggs is not going to be speaker. No one thinks he’s a potential speaker. But Jordan likely looks to more than 19 Republicans as an actual possible speaker. That said, it seems impossible to think Jordan ever gets 218 votes.

2:39 PM: The line has been that McCarthy and his allies are planning to simply grind the opposition down. Two votes. Ten votes. Twenty votes. However long they want to go, etc. But I think we’re already seeing that that is much easier said than done. People get tired very quickly. The mood sours quickly.

2:31 PM: Seemed significant to me that Biggs didn’t have his name put in nomination a second time. Gaetz’s speech was impromptu and disjointed, nominating Jim Jordan. But at least so far I haven’t heard any Never Kevins (how are we using this absurd phrase) switching. So maybe not that significant.

1:30 PM: At the risk of stating the obvious, this is going worse for McCarthy than the GOP leadership thought it would even at the start of the vote. We’re currently at 17 Republicans voting against McCarthy. Hard to figure it doesn’t get to at least 20 votes.

1:22 PM: One of the core dynamics here is that McCarthy’s strategy was to give the radicals anything and everything. Because that was the case, he had nothing really left to give. That’s not the only dynamic here, but it’s an important part of this. He enabled them. They want to make trouble. And the only trouble left to make was to destroy McCarthy himself.

1:07 PM: McCarthy now losing 7 votes, and given that we’re only at F and you’ve got a number of holdouts to go that must get to at least 10, probably a few more.

12:58 PM: No surprise but with four non-McCarthy votes and a number of the top crazies still to be called, McCarthy certainly loses this first vote. Again, expected going in.

12:52 PM: Some vibrant imagery there in the nominating speeches. The arch-toady Elise Stefanik nominates McCarthy amidst a grim mood. Democrats are giddy and boisterous in nominating Hakeem Jeffries despite losing the House.

On the big vote, my best guess is that through some set of machinations Kevin McCarthy becomes speaker today — likely a mix of abstentions and votes secured through desperate promises. I say that for only two reasons, both flimsy and thin. One is what I’d call metaphorical body language from the top Freedom Caucus arsonists. They say they’re unmovable and yet they’re still sitting at the table holding their cards like they are. The second is that political parties usually find ways to make things work at pivotal moments — the half time entertainer at the Super Bowl never forgets their lyrics. As I said, these are both pretty thin reasons. But they’re why that is my assumption going in.

It’s all coming down to the final showdown in Kevin McCarthy’s seven-year effort to recover the job he thought was his in 2015. We discussed some of these issues yesterday. Given the difficulty of coming up with any plausible explanation of how McCarthy can get 218 votes, you’re now going to hear lots of fantastical proposals about how McCarthy’s failure to get 218 votes might set the stage for a “bipartisan” speakership vote in which some number of Democrats cross the aisle to vote for McCarthy or some “moderate” alternative.

This is not going to happen. For many of you that’s probably obvious. But I thought it might be worth running through the insurmountable obstacles in the way of such an outcome.

A big question we turn to now is who will be the next Speaker of the House. This should not be a question. The leader of the Republican opposition for the last four years should obviously become speaker. But, as we know, it’s not that simple.

Tonight we heard for the first time that McCarthy has agreed to allow motions to vacate as part of his quest to get the votes to become speaker. This is a technical parliamentary tool but an extremely important one. It allows any member at any time to force a vote on firing McCarthy as speaker. There are various potential versions of this and it has to do with what is called a “privileged motion.” The latest reports suggest McCarthy has finally agreed to this, something he has insisted he would never agree to.

There are so many lies and so many questions swirling around George Santos that I wanted to take a moment before the end of the day to draw a few connections for you between the pieces we reported today and some other, earlier work by our team and others. As noted, the big question is where on earth all this money came from, if it exists at all.

Santos says he made this crazy amount of money by putting together extremely wealthy people who want to buy and sell things to each other. A private jet. A yacht. He says he got the rolodex to do this from his time at Linkbridge Investors. We’re still looking into Linkbridge. It’s a company that says it puts on closed-door conferences for top investors to network. We’re still trying to learn more about it.

But it’s what he did immediately after Linkbridge that has our attention. He went to work for a place called Harbor City which was pretty quickly flagged by the SEC, which alleged it was a ponzi scheme. A lot of the money from Harbor City is still unaccounted for. And there are multiple links between the Devolder Organization, the outfit that made Santos as much as $11 million over 18 months, and former executives at Harbor City.