Could Hakeem Jeffries Become Speaker in 2024?

It's possible....and it could paradoxically be the Republicans' best shot at salvaging their House majority

Official Portrait of Rep. Jeffries | Office of Representative Hakeem Jeffries

First, let me make clear that I am very confident that the Republicans will lose big this fall, and lose the House majority by a wide margin (See my article “The Country May Lurch Leftward in Surprising Ways in 2024”). So I write this solely as my opinion on what strategy gives the Republicans their best shot at maintaining the House majority, even though it’s extremely likely that no strategy will actually matter. But I believe this is seriously their best shot at this point, barring any unforeseen acts of God.

In the last House Speaker vote battle there were some that mused that Speaker Hakeem Jeffries might emerge from the dust, due to a small faction of moderate Republicans migrating over to vote with the Democrats. The idea was that to avoid further embarrassment and exposure as the inept clows like which they were behaving, this faction would just give up this majority power. I haven’t been able to bring myself to the point of accepting this concept of Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries being Speaker of the House in the current Republican-”led” Congress….until now. Several forces are converging to make this a realistic possibility: Republicans’ seats are diminishing through expulsion, retirement, and sickness; Republicans are desperately trying to find a damaging issue to run against Democrats on; and Speaker Mike Johnson is making budget — and potentially border — deals with Democrats.

We all know what happened the last time a Republican Speaker negotiated budget deals with Democrats. They voted that Speaker out. Therefore, the logical expectation is that they will do it again. The last time, it was a faction of MAGA arsonist Republicans that basically want the government to shut down so that they can blame Democrats. It’s not a politically viable position, especially when you’re in the majority, but perhaps they are banking on the fact that Democrats have the Senate and the Presidency, so anything bad that happens will be blamed on them. Plus, it fires up their base MAGA voters, whatever the reasons.

The same faction still exists, it never went away, and the Speaker is once again negotiating deals with Democrats to keep the government open, and this time potentially to help solve the border problems that have been recently highlighted. The same calculus is there for them, and they’ve already been loudly complaining about the budget deal in question, with some suggesting that the new Speaker needs to go. All it takes is one motion to begin the process to vacate the Speakership, and there are several people that have the will and lack of sanity to do this.

You might think, “surely, the Republicans would not do this again, it would ruin them. They would be reviled laughingstocks. There’s simply no way it could happen again. Could it? They’re not that crazy….are they?” Well, we’re about to find out. And it appears there’s greater than a 0% chance it will happen.

It was just reported that Matt Gaetz, who was the one that brought up the motion to vacate the Speakership when Kevin McCarthy was Speaker, had ulterior motives for removing McCarthy. If this is true, it does put his principled fiery MAGA ideology into question. But he wasn’t the only MAGA arsonist in the House using fiery language to justify the removal of the Speaker. There were around 10 of them that used principled concepts in support of removal, namely the association and cooperation with Democrats, along with some procedural promises they said were made and not honored. Let’s assume that they take advantage of the moment and move to vacate the Speakership again.

Once the Speakership is vacated it’s going to be even harder than it was before to successfully vote in a new Speaker. Their majority is dwindling, and they are literally on the verge of losing it outright. As of the last Speaker vote, Republicans had a 222-213 edge in the House. To get the majority of the House to elect the Speaker, they could only afford to lose four votes at that time. Now they have a 219-213 lead, with one special election in FL for a vacated seat lost and waiting for the winner to be officially seated, and another one coming up in a couple weeks in NY they are likely to lose (George Santos’ old seat). As of today, they can only lose three votes and maintain the necessary majority. If they lose the upcoming special election, that goes down to two.

In addition, the Majority Whip, Steve Scalise, is currently undergoing chemotherapy and is expected to be unable to attend House business until sometime later in February. If this all comes to a head in the next week or two, then they will only be able to lose one vote and still have the numbers for a majority vote on a new Speaker. They would all have to rally around someone again, and not lose a single vote. The same sentiments as before for preserving sanity to the House by just giving up the majority power and voting to elect Jeffries will be even stronger with another motion to vacate and yet another upcoming government shutdown battle.

I have what I think may be their perfect solution. And I would be surprised if someone in the Republican caucus isn’t mulling this or discussing this privately to other Republicans right now. They may be able to install Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, all while blaming their favorite punching bags: Democrats and RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). 

Don’t worry about that not making sense, it doesn’t have to. One thing we’ve learned is that House Republicans mostly are trying to placate one person, or, more importantly, at least be perceived as placating one person. (That one person is Trump of course, in case that wasn’t obvious). The overwhelming majority of them know they need Trump's endorsements and the backing of the MAGA crowd to win reelection in their districts. The moderates from toss-up districts don’t need that, but they are a small minority of the caucus; there’s only about 20 of them. And since the Republican majority is now so narrow, only one or two Republicans will be needed to block the Republican Speaker candidate.

Therefore, they will have the impossible choice to either placate MAGA and Trump, which will result in no Speaker because the toss-up Republicans will never allow it; or they can make a deal with Democrats to make a non-MAGA moderate the Speaker, which will enrage and alienate MAGA and Trump, and cost many of them their chances of reelection, not to mention a very uncomfortable life filled with death threats and verbal assaults in their home districts.

They could find another Mike Johnson, an anonymous staunch conservative that will convey no power or controversy. But why do that when you have an election coming up and are desperate to find something compelling to run on?

I propose that they just accept that this is an unresolvable stalemate and therefore, they should do the extreme thing: allow a certain small set of Republicans from those toss-up districts to vote for Jeffries. These votes combined with all the Democrat votes will result in Democratic Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. 

They should do this because it really takes advantage of what they do best and love to do: accuse and complain. Once it’s official that Jeffries is Speaker, they can complain about being bamboozled by the establishment and swampy deep state Democrats and RINOs who pulled a fast one and hoodwinked them into making Jeffries Speaker. I’m sure they could even figure out a way to bring Hunter’s laptop into it.

This would keep MAGA frothing at the mouth enough to continue donating to their campaigns, and it would keep Trump busy doing what he does best: composing insulting incoherent screeds on Truth Social. The challenge here is that these Republicans would have to be somewhat brave, as they could be a target of major harassment. But they should go with one or two Republicans from the shakiest districts with constituents that would be much less likely to assault, harass, and intimidate them when they return home. They might get some unsettling phone calls, but that would probably be the extent of it. They could even vote “Present” so as to not record their vote, but to lower the threshold for the majority, which would also result in Jeffries becoming Speaker. But the other Republicans would have to make an effort to distract and veer the attention to the Democrats, who are so “establishment” that they took advantage of them and staged a “coup”.

Yes, the language would get ugly, and the divisiveness intense. But if you are a House Republican right now, isn’t this the best way for things to play out? Republicans thrive on complaining about the powers that be (which is paradoxical when they are the ones in power in the House). And they excel at creating the problems they complain about, such as crippling the government from functioning efficiently and then complaining about how inefficient it is, or filing bogus and frivolous election challenges in court and then complaining about how the judicial system is rigged against them when they are dismissed for some obvious procedural reasons like standing or timeliness.

They could make up stories that simply aren’t true, even claim “Speaker election fraud”, and spout them off on Fox News. When you think about it, is it really that far-fetched? Isn’t this basically what they’ve been doing since Obama was elected President 15 years ago? With this strategy they could relieve themselves of the burden of actually governing, which we know is currently not their strength or reason for being, all while saving face with MAGA and Trump.

Last year, I would have written this in the spirit of pure satire. But I honestly think this is a real possibility and legitimate political strategy for House Republicans. In fact, it may be their only way out of their current political conundrum. It certainly would be a natural progression that they would turn into a satirical reality of themselves.