Does Kevin McCarthy have the votes to be Speaker? What if he doesn't?

 Let us begin with two stories, which I have told before.  First, after the hard-right flank of the House demanded Speaker John Boehner's gavel for allowing the government to be funded and refusing to force defaults on US financial obligations, the commentariat assumed that Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy would succeed him.  I had predicted the instability of Boehner's position with the models in my most recent book, Incremental Polarization: A Unified Spatial Theory of Legislative Elections, Parties & Roll Call Voting, which had previously been presented at some academic conferences, and since I had relevant, political science-y commentary, I offered a piece to The Monkey Cage.  In the original draft I submitted, I stated that no one should presume McCarthy's ascension.  That passage was removed by an editor whom I know and shall not name.  My piece was edited to state that McCarthy was simply the next Speaker.  His bid fell apart, and the House GOP ate itself until the only name upon which they could generally agree was Paul Ryan, and they begged and pleaded with him to take the worst job in politics: leading House Republicans.  But only until he could run for the exit door.

The moral of the story:  never overestimate Kevin McCarthy.

Next, outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Funnily enough, Pelosi and Boehner are the modern Speakers whom I praise effusively, although given that the competition includes people like Dennis Hastert-- a child molester-- perhaps that is not the high praise that it sounds.  Anyway, when Pelosi reclaimed her gavel from Ryan after the 2018 election, one may or may not recall that two groups within the Democratic Party bristled.  There were the "moderates"-- posturing phonies who decided that they could show how not-commie they were by attacking the horrible, evil San Francisco liberal, Nancy Pelosi.  Then, ironically enough, there were the actual communists, for whom she wasn't commie enough.  Mixed into the rhetoric among both sets of children was the complaint that a new generation needed to lead the party.  And the children should lead them, or something.  The problem was that the children could never find a child to lead them.

As this whole, silly affair played out, Pelosi called each whining child into her office.  On camera, she gave the grandmother-smile, but off-camera, she put the fear of Baal into them, or whatever the hell they worship in San Francisco while drinking their baby blood, m'I'right?  Anywho, she brought the hammer down-- oops, too soon-- and one by one, they fell into line.  She had to make some concessions, but nobody with a brain bet against Nancy Fuckin' Pelosi.

You see, that's the difference between the most skilled Speaker in modern history, and the dumbass shitweasel who has already been overestimated more times than one could count.  And right now, he thinks his key to the Speakership is some NFT-selling con man.  Seriously, even Trump's loyal cultists can't get behind the NFT thing.

So, does Kevin McCarthy have the votes?

The Republicans have 222 seats.  The Speakership is a majority vote.  Not a plurality, a majority.  You need a full 218.  Now, that's a really high number for someone like Kevin to count, but here's harder math.  You see, little Kevin may have scraped by on his addition test, but he never got as far as subtraction.  222 - x = 218.  Solve for x.  Or what, is that, like, pre-algebra?  Fuck, that's way over Kevin's head.  You can probably solve for x.  Little Kev' can lose four votes.  If he loses five, then he loses.  Again.  So here are the questions.

Question The First:  Are there at least five Republicans who will never, under any circumstances, vote for McCarthy?

Question The Second:  Does making concessions to the most ardent McCarthy detractors on the right cost him detractors vaguely center-ish, and vice versa?  If so, how many?

Question The Third:  Suppose there are enough concessions McCarthy can make to get him to 218.  How toothless will he be as a result?

In answer to Question The First, we often have a problem.  The problem is called, "bullshit posturing."  It also goes by names like, "cheap talk," and many others.  At various points in time, five or more House Republicans have said that they will not support McCarthy, and Kev' has not moved them.  At least not publicly.  The hardline anti-Kev-ers have been the true believer wingnuts who understand that Kev' is not one of them.  He is too obvious, and unlike McConnell, he cannot appeal to them by saying "come with me if you want to win," because he is also a blithering moron.  All of the stupidity, none of the authenticity.  Bad combo, Kev'.

Does that mean the wingnuts won't come 'round in the end?  Trying to predict crazy people requires stochastic models rather than game theory, so I cannot derive a rational prediction of their future behavior.  Point being, who the fuck knows?  I knew that Pelosi could crack the whip and bring the children into line, but Kev'?  He has failed before, and failure is always an option.  I don't know why anyone assumed that he got better at this.

Question The Second.  There are not very many moderates in the House GOP, but there are a few who will be upset if McCarthy makes concessions to Andy Biggs, and the other wackos.  Here's the basic problem.  It all goes back to a reference that I make occasionally.  William Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions.  The idea is that your best move is to put together the "minimal winning coalition."  If you need cloture in the Senate, that's 60 votes, but usually, that's 50%+1.  Otherwise, you are giving away more than you must in order to secure unnecessary votes.  The problem is that you have a limited pool of resources with which to secure votes.

So the math problem-- again, Kev' sucks at this, and everything else-- is the question of whether or not Kev' has a large enough pool of resources to get to 218.  He cannot get to 222.  The question is whether or not giving something to Andy Biggs, or some other wingnut costs him two moderate-ish Republicans, and similarly, if maintaining those moderate-ish Republicans means he loses Biggs.  This is a vote-buying exercise, except that instead of buying the votes with money-- which doesn't work-- he is trying to buy votes with political promises, knowing that a promise to the center(ish) is a cost to the right, and vice versa.  With a thin enough margin and a sufficiently wacko right, he may not have enough resources-- promises-- to buy the Speakership with those promises.

Tough shit.  I'd like to buy a big enough portfolio of stocks and bonds to retire right fuckin' now, but I can't, so I have to keep pretending to work.  This is me, working.

Anyway, these negotiations are happening behind closed doors.  Kev' still hasn't gotten those 218!

Question The Third.  Here's what I don't get.  When the House Republicans did that very stupid thing of telling Boehner to get lost, Paul Ryan was smart enough to realize that the smart move was to say 'fuck no, I'm not taking that job!'  Do you remember this?  Here's how it happened.  Boehner's biggest problem was getting his dumbass caucus to allow him to raise the debt ceiling so as not to collapse the global economy on a fuckin' lark.  Paul Ryan was smart enough to know a) that the debt ceiling needed to be raised, and b) that the caucus of economic illiterates who ran Boehner out of town would do worse to him if he dared to save the global economy.  So, as a condition for taking the job, he demanded that Boehner raise the debt ceiling one last time, carrying through the rest of Obama's Presidency.  His hope was that a Republican would win in 2016, and he wouldn't have to play those stupid games and get trapped the same way.

Kev'?  He wasn't smart enough to see that coming then, and he's not smart enough to see it coming now.  This is the worst job in Washington, and he is willing to sacrifice anything to get it.  Why?  I have no fucking clue.  He is walking blind into it, even though he watched Paul Ryan play the game smartly.

Instead, he is in the process of negotiating away every fucking power he would need to do a job that was going to be nigh-impossible in the first place.

Remember how I keep saying that Kevin McCarthy is a goddamned idiot?

Is there any way that he isn't an idiot?  Let's try and salvage an argument for McCarthy's non-stupidity.  Suppose he plans to be Speaker for a year or two, let himself get Boehnered or some other fuckin' disaster because he can't manage the caucus, then leave and go be a highly paid lobbyist because a former Speaker will rake in the dough.

There is a waiting period before you can work as a registered lobbyist, but K Street will be showing up with dumptrucks of money.

That's the best I got, because he is doing everything possible to make it so that even if he gets the job, he won't have the tools necessary to do the job.  Meaning:  he goes down as one of the most inept Speakers in history, leaves in ignominy, and then moves on to the next thing.

Lobbying.

That's all I got.

Otherwise, I revert to the "Kevin McCarthy is a fucking moron" hypothesis, which has a lot of predictive power anyway.

So.  What if McCarthy loses?  Again?  Like the loser that he is.  Having already lost.  At this particular game.  Because he's a loser.  And a moron.

Well, I've read this book before, with McCarthy as the protagonist, and it wasn't a very good book.  I vaguely predicted the outcome, but I wasn't permitted to say it in my Monkey Cage piece, which was annoying, but anyway, either Kev' eventually gets told, in no uncertain terms, that he'll never get 218, or he barrels ahead to a floor vote, and nobody gets 218 because the majority caucus is divided.  In the California Assembly, there was a dude named Willie Brown, not to be confused with the fabled blues musician, who ruled the Assembly so adroitly that even when his party (the Dems) lost the majority, he cobbled together a majority coalition with a few GOPers to keep his Speakership.  Willie Brown was a badass.

Kev'?  You're no Willie Brown.

And without the Biggs contingent, you're fucked, and the House goes to a second ballot.

Then who gets the gavel?  I have no clue.

Paul Ryan managed to get the caucus unified around him because the hardliners trusted him as an Ayn Rand disciple and anti-tax warrior, while the Boehner side saw him as someone who wasn't so economically stupid that he'd blow through the debt ceiling or some other fuckin' wacko thing.  So, he united the pragmatist wing of the party with the terrorist wing of the party.

Is there anyone like that now?  Scalise?  Scary to say, if he's what passes for sane (he described himself as David Duke without the baggage!).  Do they go with Stefanik because she is Trump-approved and a response to Pelosi?  I wouldn't rule out Jim Jordan, not because the vaguely-sane caucus would find him palatable, but just because they might be browbeaten into accepting him.

Ryan was always a posturing fraud, but he at least played the role of a wonk.  The House GOP doesn't have that anymore, so they don't have an obvious alternative.  Any alternative is going to be a Trump-backed alternative.  That's Stefanik, unless they default to Scalise.  (Don't rule out Jordan.)

The point is, I've been saying for fuckin' ever, don't assume that McCarthy gets the gavel.  Are you watching this play out?  Maybe he does, but if he does, he goes down in flames at the price he paid.

In contrast, remember that Pelosi looked at this kind of situation and said, "do you want to bet against me?"

I didn't.

Willie Brown, "Future Blues."