Steve Scalise Withdraws From Speaker’s Race

Steve Scalise has clearly seen the writing on the wall because Thursday night the House Majority Leader announced that he is withdrawing his name from the race for the vacant House speaker role.

"I just shared with my colleagues that I'm withdrawing my name as a candidate for the speaker designee," Scalise told reporters.

Scalise defeated Jim Jordan to win the House Republican Conference’s nomination for Speaker by a vote of 113-99 on Wednesday, but it was quickly clear Scalise wouldn’t have the 217 votes needed to become Speaker of the House. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Nancy Mace, all allies of Jim Jordan, publicly came out against Scalise after the vote even though Jordan offered the conference’s nominee his support.

Marjorie Taylor Greene citied Scalise’s battle with blood cancer as the reason she was witholding her support in an interview on Wednesday.

"There are still some people that have their own agendas," Scalise said of his decision to drop out.

"This House of Representatives needs a speaker and we need to open up the House again," the Louisiana congressman added. "But clearly, not everybody is there and they're still schisms that have to get resolved."

The decision by Scalise to withdraw throws the House into further turmoil, which seems to be the norm for the Republican conference. The shocking withdrawal by Scalise comes only 9 days after an ever more unprecedented move by eight far-right Republicans to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Moments after Scalise withdrew, Congressman Jim Banks suggested Republicans should move forward with Jordan as their choice for Speaker.

“I voted for Jim Jordan in the conference election yesterday and I remain committed to doing everything I can to help elect him the next Speaker of the House,” Banks said. “He is a conservative fighter and a leader who can unite our party.”

But it's unclear whether Jim Jordan, a extreme far-right Republican an close Trump ally, could succeed where Scalise failed — getting the 217 votes needed to secure the job.

One Republican who has already state they’re a NO on Jim Jordan is Colorado Representative Ken Buck.

Buck said he would refuse to back either Scalise or Jordan after neither would admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election during the closed-door Republican Conference meeting on Wednesday.

“If we don’t have the moral clarity to decide whether President Biden won or not, we don’t have the moral clarity to rule in this country, period,” Buck said in an interview Wednesday.

House Republicans plan to meet later Friday to restart the nomination process for speaker, but at this point it's unclear that any Republican could secure the 217 votes needed from this divided conference to become Speaker.

One thing is clear though, the Republican chaos which leaves the House leaderless, has prevented Congress from acting to aid Israel, pass additional funding for Ukraine, and work to prevent a looming government shutdown on November 17th.

The Republican chaos is costing the American people and our allies, proving once again the GOP is unable to govern.