So here’s an interesting question. Suppose the GOP wins the House back in November but neither McCarthy or any other Republican can get 216 votes to be elected? Nobody is Speaker and unlike the Senate there is no House equivalent of President Pro Temp. So you have a Constitutionally mandated office with nobody to fill it.
“So here’s an interesting question. Suppose the GOP wins the House back in November but neither McCarthy or any other Republican can get 216 votes to be elected? Nobody is Speaker and unlike the Senate there is no House equivalent of President Pro Temp. So you have a Constitutionally mandated office with nobody to fill it.”
No. They keep voting till somebody is Speaker. From Wikipedia
“If no candidate receives a majority vote, then the roll call is repeated until a speaker is elected. In the longest speaker election in House history, 133 ballots (cast over a two-month period) were needed before representatives chose Nathaniel Banks as their presiding officer for the 34th Congress (1855–1857). Multiple roll calls have been necessary only 14 times since 1789, and not since 1923.”