Posted on 09/07/2017 3:31:25 PM PDT by mandaladon
Several influential House conservatives are privately plotting ways to use the legislative calendar this fall to push their hard-line agenda — including quiet discussions about possibly mounting a leadership challenge to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.
The group has gone so far as to float the idea of recruiting former House speaker Newt Gingrich or former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum as potential replacements for Ryan (R-Wis.) should there be a rebellion. The Constitution does not require that an elected member of the House serve as speaker.
While the chances that a non-House member could mount a credible threat to Ryan are exceedingly slim, the fact that the group has even toyed with the idea underscores their desire to create trouble for GOP leaders if they believe their demands are not being addressed.
The closed-door conversations are being led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, in consultation with his allies on the right, in particular Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist who recently returned to his perch as executive chairman of the Breitbart News website. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Freedom Caucus members are also involved in the talks to varying degrees, according to nearly a dozen people with knowledge of the discussions.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Between this and the Pelosi Schumer thing, I’d say someone be messin with Ryan, McConnell and the rest of the GOPe’s heads.
I love how what was once one of the most desired jobs in politics is now so toxic that we have to have this stupid discussion every two years.
Why don’t we make Ted Cruz’ dog the Speaker? How about the corpse of Spiro Agnew?
Ryan is not going anywhere in the short term, because no one else wants the miserable gig.
Of course he does, it doesn't explicitly say he does in the Constitution because the notion he doesn't is the height of absurdity. It also omits the fact that the Speaker needs to be alive, and human, but I don't hear anyone suggesting Cavlin Coolidge or the Taco Bell Dog for the job.
There is no rule saying that the Speaker must be a member.
There is no rule stating the Speaker must be alive.
All Speakers are members of the legislative bodies they preside over, always, through all of space and time. It’s not explicitly stated because it doesn’t need to be, James Madison would laugh at this notion. Some idiots on the Internet came up with so that they could fantasize about their ideal Speaker.
The House’s own website says the Speaker is not required to be a member, though every Speaker has been one.
http://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Speaker-of-the-House/
“Regardless, the Speaker—who has always been (but is not required to be) a House Member and has the same duties to his or her local constituents like the other 434 Members—is at the levers of power.”
Santorum is a dud. Run out of office in 2006. He’s noncompetitive. The wrong man for the wrong job. The GOP needs to be forwarded looking, not back a relic from the 1990s.
The GOP probably couldn’t select a House leader that would be easier to mock, discredit, and thoroughly undermine.
The House’s own website is not correct.
If the House ever did elect a non-member, which it will not because that’s silly, the other party would have standing to sue, would sue, and the courts would strike that nonsense down.
The House’s website is written by an employee of the House, perhaps from the Office of the Historian of Congress. From what I’ve seen, the Historian of Congress has his own PC agenda and doesn’t seem to know much about history.
The Framers based our Speaker on the Speaker of the House of Commons of the British Parliament, who was back then, and still is today, a Member of the House of Commons. If the House could elect a non-Member as Speaker, you can rest assured that James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Gouvernor Morris and the other members of the Committee on Style and Arrangement that wrote the final text of the Constitution would have said so specifically (or, at the very least, Madison or Hamilton would have mentioned it in The Federalist or elsewhere. In fact, when James Madison argued (correctly, in my opinion) that the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 was unconstitutional in that it placed legislative officers in the line of succession to the U.S. presidency, his argument presupposed that the Speaker always would be a House Member, and no one argued to the contrary.
In my opinion, the House parliamentarian is being silly in counting votes cast for non-Members as properly cast Speaker votes (which are thus included in the denominator when determining whether the Speaker received a majority of votes cast; voting “present,” or not voting at all, do not affect the denominator), and his mistake will come to the fore when Ron Paul dies and some Paultard tries to vote for his dead corpse as Speaker.
We DID have a non-member President from 2006-2010, when John Stroger kicked bucket and they appointed his son Toddler... er, I mean Todd, to replace him as Board President. Toddler...whoops, I mean Todd again, had never been elected to diddly squat (his previous office had been an APPOINTED city alderman), so he wasn't a commissioner on the board. William Beavers was elected to fill John Stroger's old seat on the board (commissioner from the 4th district)
In any case, since FReepers are so fond of saying things should be tried at the local and state level before being attempted nationally.. I would like to point out the "non-member chairing the meetings and running the board" thing didn't go over very well here.
Background:
Cook Board Presidents are elected county-wide. Todd Stroger was appointed to the rat nomination for the office in 2006 by the Cook County Democratic Central Committee after his father (who had been renominated) died and was then elected in November over Republican Tony Periaca (a commissioner for a district who was simultaneously reelected to that position), taking office the next month.
John Stroger was both the President (elected countywide) and a commissioner for a district (elected separately at the same time), and before there were districts was a commissioner for the city of Chicago (all them elected at-large). The law allows one to run for both offices at the same time and for a time at least, it was standard practice.
John Stroger’s predecessor as President, Dick Phelen, was simultaneously a commissioner for suburban Cook. And Phelen’s predecessor, the legendary George Dunne, was simultaneously a commissioner for Chicago. Prior to that, I have no idea, but it’s likely Todd S wasn’t the first to not simultaneously be a commissioner.
Prickwankle is not a commissioner for a district, who know’s whether the dual role will come back into fashion after her. I can tell you I’m glad the bitch doesn’t have a vote AND a veto. I’d much rather have Todd S back, he doesn’t seem so bad anymore.
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Gingrich and Santorum have both screwed us thoroughly in the past.
We have no need for either of them in congress.
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