Never going to happen.

The MAGA party is now all about “Never admit fault. Always blame others. Compromise is weakness. Losing is not acceptable.”.

These people got into office because their voters want the crazy. They want the Jewish Space Lasers and the Beetlejuice hand jobs and Hunter Biden’s dick pics. Any attempt to work with “normal” Republicans or Democrats! is unacceptable and grounds for expulsion, and these people would be putting their seats at risk to a primary challenger even crazier and dumber than they are.

Similarly, the “mainstream” Republicans feel the same way. Kevin McCarthy just said himself that the GOP knows they’re supposed to be working with Democrats but they literally don’t want to because they think that since they have the majority, they should just be able to do whatever they want. And it’s been that way for decades now. See the Hastert rule as a prime example. Or McConnell’s mantra where anything and everything the Democrats do must be opposed by default, even if the idea was originally a Republican idea that Democrats support. A Republican being willing to side with Hakeem Jeffries or even willing to negotiate with Democrats to elect a more moderate Republican would be political suicide for a lot of these people.

And there’s no possible way a Democrat is voting for either a Republican or a MAGA nut. Even if the candidate were to make all sorts of promises, there’s no way for the Democrats to actually enforce those promises once they become speaker because the GOP has the majority, and they have absolutely no issues with going back on their word.

Which means this is going to be one hell of a wild ride. Given our current political climate, I cannot see how any viable candidate has a path to 218, nor do I see any one of the 3 sides being willing to back down.