Did Kevin McCarthy offer enough concessions overnight to finally win over enough dissidents to win election as Speaker? Or did he give away so much that McCarthy risks alienating his previous supporters? Either way, McCarthy lost on the seventh ballot before the clerk got out of the Ds, which means that the negotiations will either continue — or McCarthy may need to step aside.

The morning didn’t start off sounding like reconciliation was in the air among House Republicans. Dan Bishop said he’d rather resign than cut a deal that ended up with McCarthy in charge without ironclad guarantees for reform, for instance:

One of the Republican holdouts who has voted six times against electing Rep.-elect Kevin McCarthy as House speaker says he would rather resign from Congress than see his right-wing allies work out a deal to give the California lawmaker the gavel.

North Carolina Rep.-elect Dan Bishop, 58, made the threat to Roll Call in an article published Thursday.

“We’re going to either see improvement up here the same way we made remarkable improvements in North Carolina in the state legislature, or I’m out,” Bishop told the outlet.

The lawmaker said under McCarthy’s leadership, existential threats to the country had “gotten worse not better,” and said he was willing to resign from his position because he’s “older than the average bear” and “not going to stay up here [in DC] for decades.”

Bishop then kicked off the session by nominating — again — Byron Donalds, who got the requisite 20 votes in the last ballot. Donalds, a second-term Representative from Florida, ran for a lesser leadership post a few weeks ago and got a credible if insufficient 74 votes against Elise Stefanik. “We had the opportunity to elect the first Black Speaker of the House,” Bishop thundered, to little applause or reaction.

The outcome of this ballot served as a test the willingness of the dissenters to bargain. Even if didn’t result in an outright McCarthy victory, he could have claimed some traction and momentum if the votes for Donalds came in under 20 and McCarthy picked up those votes. McCarthy tried to show good faith and offered some significant concessions overnight:

• A one-member “motion to vacate”: The GOP leader appears to have finally acquiesced to a demand to lower the threshold needed to force a vote ousting a speaker to just one member. While McCarthy originally indicated that restoring the one-member “motion to vacate” was a red line, his allies now argue that there’s not a huge practical difference between this and his previous offer of requiring five members to trigger the vote.
• Rules Committee seats for the Freedom Caucus: McCarthy is prepared to give the House Freedom Caucus two seats on the powerful House Rules Committee, which oversees the amendment process for the floor. (Some conservatives are still holding out for four seats on the panel.) There are also talks about giving a third seat to a conservative close to the Freedom Caucus but not in it — someone like Reps. THOMAS MASSIE (R-Ky.). Who will pick those members? We’re told there is ongoing haggling. Typically, it’s the speaker’s prerogative, but conservatives want to choose their own members for these jobs.
• A vote on term limits: This is a key demand of Rep. RALPH NORMAN (R-S.C.), who has proposed a constitutional amendment limiting lawmakers to three terms in the House.
• Major changes to the appropriations process: Fears of another trillion-plus-dollar omnibus spending bill have been a major driver of the conservative backlash to McCarthy. The brewing deal includes a promise for standalone votes on each of the 12 yearly appropriations bills, which would be considered under what is known as an “open rule,” allowing floor amendments to be offered by any lawmaker. Conservatives also won a concession to carve out any earmarks included in those packages for separate votes, though it’s unclear if they’d be voted on as one package or separately.

How well did this work?

GAETZ just voted for Trump

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 5, 2023

Yesterday, Gaetz criticized Trump for endorsing McCarthy. Today Gaetz voted for him instead of McCarthy or Donalds. That doesn’t exactly scream good faith.

As the vote rolled forward, reports that Donalds and Tom Emmer held a meeting floated out. They both missed the roll call vote, but can vote at the end when the clerk polls for any missing votes:

Donalds, Roy and Perry all leave House floor and enter Emmer’s office. Scott Perry not happy: “There is no agreement and it doesn't show good faith to leak the terms of any discussion”

— Max Cohen (@maxpcohen) January 5, 2023

Donalds won’t tell me how he will vote on the seventh ballot. He and other holdouts meeting in Emmer’s office pic.twitter.com/lazKibpzvw

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 5, 2023

Presumably, Emmer was trying to get Donalds to endorse McCarthy and cast his vote that way rather than for himself. That probably wouldn’t discourage the dissenters, however, since Jim Jordan did the same thing and the dissenters simply adopted Donalds as a fallback.

We’ll see where this lands at the end of the vote, but right now it looks like the GOP has reached a real impasse. That will either force McCarthy to cut a deal with Democrats — with a different set of concessions — or force the dissidents to get serious about a candidate that can get a real consensus with the entire caucus, McCarthy included. Stay tuned, but in the meantime, let’s all note that McCarthy has passed the Vinny Gambini Threshold, as someone joked on Twitter last night:

Update: Donalds returned to vote for himself.

Update: There was no change at all in the outcome. McCarthy still got 201 votes; Donalds got 19 votes, Trump one, and Spartz apparently voted ‘present’ again. The concessions last night didn’t move the needle at all. Unless something else is cooking in the background, it may be time for a new plan from the GOP.

Update: Eighth verse, same as the first?

BRIAN MAST of Florida nominating McCarthy for speaker.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 5, 2023

Stay tuned for the next iteration of Groundhog Ballot!

Update: The eighth ballot isn’t over yet, but McCarthy has already lost it, and it doesn’t look like anything changed at all from Ballot 7.