Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Until someone gets 218 votes. One went for about 113 times
until someone got 218. Will see if i can get the article again.

133 ballots -- Lucky was still on tab: Kevin McCarthy could face a floor fight for speaker. That hasn’t happened in a century.

The last time a vote for speaker went to multiple ballots on the House floor was in 1923. The longest was 133 ballots over two months.

[...]

Dec. 3, 1855, started like any other opening day of a new Congress. The House was called to order at noon and the chamber moved to the first order of business: electing the speaker.

But there was no favorite for the job. Twenty-one candidates received votes for speaker on the first ballot, with none getting the majority needed. “There was no choice,” the Congressional Globe printed that day. The House held three more unsuccessful votes for speaker that day before adjourning just after 2 p.m.

In the weeks that followed, the House was in gridlock as no candidate could clinch the votes needed. It wasn’t until the 133rd ballot that Rep. Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts was elected speaker of the House, defeating Rep. William Aiken of South Carolina by a vote of 103 to 100.

The date was Feb. 2, 1856, two months after the first speaker vote.

The House concluded business that day by unanimously adopting a resolution thanking the clerk for presiding “during the arduous and protracted contest for Speaker.”

1923: The last time the speaker vote went multiple ballots 

When the House gathered on Dec. 4, 1923, Frederick Gillett sought re-election as speaker. The Republican from Massachusetts had served in the role since 1919 and his party had maintained control of the chamber.

But after the first ballot, Gillett did not have the votes needed. Three more votes were held and each time enough Progressive Republicans supported other candidates, blocking Gillett from regaining the gavel.

“Mr. Clerk, it seems entirely evident that no good purpose can be served by having another ballot tonight,” Republican leader Nicholas Longworth said on the floor before the chamber adjourned that night.

At issue were rule changes that Progressive Republicans wanted. For two days, the group refused to budge and on a few ballots, the Democrats’ nominee even led in the tally.

Longworth eventually struck a deal with the progressives and on the ninth ballot, Gillett was re-elected speaker.

There have only been 14 instances in congressional history where it took more than two ballots for a nominee to get a majority. The first 13 happened before the Civil War.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/kevin-mccarthy-face-floor-fight-speaker-hasnt-happened-century-rcna58391

This is the regression exemplified in American conservatives today.

You do know some extreme far-right are, in their own minds, fighting a 2nd civil war now.