The Motion to Vacate - At ANY time ANY member of the House can Move to Vacate. A vote is taken, and if the majority vote Yay, then the speaker loses their position, and a new speaker is elected.

Yes, this is one of the many parliamentary shenanigans enabled by our mennonite democracy. However, we just watched a week of "Republicans in Disarray" in which not a single democrat broke ranks even once.

This happens often with the minority party: they are powerless to do anything about the vote, so they often sit them out and spend their time on other meetings, committees, negotiations, whatever. Not every member of the House is present. Not every member of the House votes on every bill or motion.

Some wonk at the New York Times made a point shortly after Trump was elected that has proven to be more true than anything else I've read. He pointed out that governments are composed not just of rules, but of customs... and that we were about to find out just how much of our governance was made of rules, because Trump gave no fux about customs.

Matt Goetz very clearly gives no fux about customs, either. In this case, however, that hardly makes the Republicans stronger. Two armies fight. Both are the same size. One side, however, is twenty five percent in rebellion. Fully a quarter of their troops disagree as to who to fight, how to fight, what to fight over, and who they take orders from.

So all that needs to happen, is 5 Republicans sneak into the House at 3:AM, have a vote to Move to Vacate McCarthy from the Speakership, and then vote again for WHOEVER THEY WANT.

And then... the rest of the government sits on its hands and goes "well shux you got us there good da-HYUK"? The Senate's gonna do that? Biden's gonna go along with it? The general argument made by actual observers of politics is that Kevin McCarthy is the weakest House Speaker since the Civil War and your corollary seems to be "therefore this is bad for the Democrats."

Trump. DeSantis. Marilyn Manson. Mike Lindell. LITERALLY ANY AMERICAN can be the Speaker of the House.

This canard comes up whenever Republicans R Dix. TRUTH: the constitution does not specifically require the Speaker to be an elected member of Congress. FICTION: there is any precedent or suggestion or legal wiggle-room for the idea that the Speaker doesn't have to be an elected member of Congress. This is like John Eastman's "the Constitution doesn't specifically say the vice president can't pick whoever he wants to be President." Technically correct, the worst kind of correct.

All the Republicans have to do now is wait for one of these long and boring sessions, and once everyone leave for dinner or bed or whatever and they have the balance right in the House, ANY member can stand up and ask for the floor, then present the Move to Vacate, which is voted on immediately with whoever is left on the House floor.

This happened recently.

The end result was fuckall. As it turns out, if enough people go "nah" all the hare-brained shit in the world won't make anything change. And again, a quarter of the Republicans are at "nah" to anything other than Jewish space lasers.

We could literally wake up tomorrow morning with Mike Lindell as the Speaker of the House and be completely powerless to do ANYTHING about it.

Every now and then, you should ask the Internet if anyone else is worried about what you're worried about, and if not, why not. The place is often wrong, but it has no shortage of opinions.

Democrats can't have 200 people sitting in the House, or within 5 minutes of the House floor, 24/7/365... so it is only a matter of time before this action is taken and something truly insane happens to the House.

Just spitballin' here but traditionally speaking, which party has been more about proper procedures, lists and organization of late? And which one brought the tiger?