Republican holdouts continue to refuse to give Kevin McCarthy the votes he needs. For a third day, divided Republicans left the Speaker’s chair of the U.S. House sitting empty Thursday, as party leader Kevin McCarthy failed and failed again to win enough votes to seize the chamber’s gavel in an excruciating string of ballots. Pressure was building as McCarthy lost the seventh, eighth and ninth rounds of voting, tying the number it took the last time this happened, 100 years ago, in a fight to choose a Speaker in a disputed election. But with his supporters and foes seemingly at a stalemate, feelings of both boredom and desperation seemed increasingly evident with no end in sight. One McCarthy critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, even cast his votes for Donald Trump, a symbolic but pointed sign of the broader divisions over the Republican Party’s future. It’s not happening,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado who nominated a new alternative, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, and urged colleagues to consider a future without McCarthy, saying: “We need a leader who is not of the broken system.”
via cbc: U.S. House Republicans continue to choose stalemate over electing a Speaker as 9th ballot fails