So much for a first-vote acclamation win for Jim Jordan in today’s House Speaker election. Prior to the vote, sources claimed that Jordan had narrowed his opposition within the House GOP caucus to no more than Kevin McCarthy faced on the first ballot in January. Supposedly, Jordan opted to go to the floor in a hope that the pressure of the moment would convert enough of those to get the House back in order.

Both of those assumptions turned out to be … poor:

FIRST BALLOT

JEFFRIES — 212
JORDAN — 200
MCCARTHY — 6
ZELDIN — 3
SCALISE — 7
GARCIA — 1
EMMER — 1
COLE — 1
MASSIE — 1

No speaker elected.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 17, 2023

The 20 votes against Jordan matches the number of votes McCarthy lost on ballots 3 through 11 in January.

It's more than McCarthy lost on the first two ballots (19).

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) October 17, 2023

As I write this, Jordan has not yet revealed whether he plans to continue holding ballots today. Unless he gets 18 conversions out of 21 quickly, this will turn into a very long night.

Perhaps the House GOP caucus will find a way to pull its collective head out of its collective nether regions at some point today. As I have written before, Jordan would be fine as Speaker, as would have Scalise and McCarthy. The same situation will confront anyone who wins the election — a razor-thin majority while Democrats hold the Senate and White House. Meanwhile, the nation has pressing business and a very big foreign policy/national security crisis in the Middle East. The CR that catalyzed this Faceplant Fortnight runs out in less than a month, and a government shutdown over Republican infighting will do nothing to improve their already-damaged claims to responsible governance.

If the caucus can fix itself, great. For now, though, they appear too caught up in personal animosities and grudges to cohere well enough to get 217 votes behind anyone inside the caucus. The longer that goes, the more risk the GOP runs of having Democrats act to install a Republican beholden to Hakeem Jeffries, and the greater chance of a permanent split of the narrow majority for the rest of this session.

The alternative to that would be a figure from outside the House that can pull together all of the cliques and cranks without favoring any of them — someone with enough respect to act as a leader and mediator between them.

My suggestion: Draft Mike Pence.

Yes, yes, I know — Pence doesn’t want the job. He wants to win the Republican nomination for president in 2024. His supporters insist that Pence’s undeniable courage in standing for the Constitution in January 2021 should be rewarded — and that’s true, but it doesn’t mean that the GOP has to nominate him in 2024. Pence’s time in that sense has passed, and even he should realize it by now.

But what better way to honor Pence’s actions two-plus years ago than to make him the leader of the House now? Pence served in the House honorably before becoming governor of Indiana and then Vice President under Donald Trump. He has maintained good relations with Congress all along. Pence also has lines of communication to the different factions of the GOP, and unlike everyone else involved in this debacle, hasn’t burned any bridges with any of them.

At the moment, Pence is heading for an ignominious defeat in the GOP presidential primary, which would be a sad end to a remarkable career for this principled conservative warrior. Would it not be a far better denouement to have Pence ride to the rescue of a troubled GOP caucus and assume its leadership in its moment of crisis? By its nature, such an election would only last this session but would allow Congress to get back to work and Pence to contribute substantially to providing a fresh argument for responsible Republican governance.

I suspect that there’s too much personal ambition involved for this solution to even occur to those involved in this melodrama, let alone see it adopted. But it makes a lot more sense than anything that has transpired over the last couple of weeks, and a lot more sense than beating heads against the same wall for another couple of weeks more.