The Speaker of the House is supposed to be the Speaker for the whole House, not just for one party. Traditionally the Speaker is chosen by the majority party and obviously favors the majority party, but as I understand it, is not supposed to represent ONLY the majority party. Of course in recent years, as cooperation between the parties has diminished to almost nothing, the Speaker has come to represent a single party. But is this necessary?
We have all heard recently that the Speaker need not be a member of the House. Outsiders can be imported to be Speaker. I wonder...is it also true that the Speaker need not be a member of the majority party?
Hakeem Jeffries, the new leader of the House Democrats, has strong support from the Democratic side. He would need to peel away only 5 votes from Republicans to be elected Speaker. As Speaker, he would decide who goes on which committees, and also who chairs them—am I right? I believe the rules require that the majority party should have a majority in each committee, and hold the chair. But Jeffries has not made any deals with the flamethrowers on the Republican side of the House. He could appoint rational rather than fanatic members to be the chairs of the committees, and keep off important committees those who don’t belong on them (MTG, for example).
Surely there are 5 rational Republicans who would welcome a rational speaker who would appoint rational committee members and chairs. Indeed, I suspect there are well more than 5 Republicans who are sick and tired of the clowns now running the Republican show. If there were a secret ballot election of the House Speaker, Jeffries might well win.
A House with a Republican majority but led by Jeffries could turn out to be a model of efficient government. Bills could be passed by bipartisan majorities rather than the party line votes we have come to expect. There may be a downside to this but I’ll wait for the commenters to point them out.