House Republicans feeling time crunch say they’ll stick with Scalise for now

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was nominated to be House Speaker by the Republican Party, but there are about 10 holdouts preventing him from getting the 217 votes needed to officially be elected on the House floor. We spoke with lawmakers as they left a closed door meeting the Scalise Thursday afternoon about the progress they’re making toward reopening the House of Representatives.  

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., 

We really need to get our act together. This is a continuation of a pretty, pretty dysfunctional disease of the 118th. We have a lot of members who just feel like that they will let perfect be the enemy the good. That is not how any functional government or any functional marriage or any functional business works. At some point, you get to a majority decision and then you go execute. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA,

There’s concerns of him not having a clear plan. That’s also one of my concerns. Jim Jordan did lay out a clear plan. There’s also still, we aren’t really healed up from what happened last week, when eight of our Republicans joined with all the Democrats and ousted our Speaker. 

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J. 

You have to give Steve his chance. I said I was a big supporter of Jim Jordan. However, I said I would support the winner. I am supporting the winner which is Steve Scalise. If it doesn’t work in a relatively short amount of time, nobody’s defined that, then we need to move on and find somebody that can gain consensus. We can’t keep doing this.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-NE,

They’re showing to a degree that they can’t govern. So we’re gonna, you have to get 218 somewhere. So we’re giving them some time to try to do this right. But I believe in the continuum, it’s going to have to be a bipartisan solution.