Has the answer to the GOP's speaker woes been in front of them all along?

Without a consensus pick, Republicans are increasingly looking to empower the man already holding the gavel

Patrick McHenry
Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images
(Image credit: Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images)

It's been two weeks since Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz and a cadre of far rightwing lawmakers forced Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to vacate his position as Speaker of the House, ending what had already been a tumultuous era for congressional Republicans and plunging the party into weird and uncharted political waters. Already two Republican heavyweights, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have tried and failed to reach the requisite support for their respective bids to become speaker, leaving the fate of several upcoming major legislative necessities — including preventing a government shutdown — in uneasy limbo. At the same time, Scalise and Jordan's successive failures to earn the speaker's gavel have raised an even more unsettling possibility: that this current Republican majority may simply be unable to sufficiently unite behind anyone to serve as the next speaker of the House. 

As GOP efforts to land on a suitable speaker nominee continue to falter, a growing cohort of lawmakers have begun circling around an unexpected solution. Rather than looking outside the box for a new consensus figure that Republicans can rally around, what if the best, most viable option to restart business as (somewhat) usual in the House is to simply turn to the man who has for the past two weeks worked in McCarthy's stead as his appointed steward: Speaker Pro Tempore Rep. Patrick McHenry

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Rafi Schwartz, The Week US

Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.