Hello there, I'm Chuck Todd. This is the Chuck Todd Cast. We're recording this on Wednesday

afternoon. At this very moment, there's still no speaker at the house. There are now

been four votes. And in all four cases, Kevin McCarthy is actually lost ground or not made

up any so far. He lost ground a bit on the fourth vote when he lost the supporter to

the present category. But at this way, he was 16 votes short before the member of Congress

voter present. And even though it lowers the threshold, he's still 16 votes short. So,

it's possible by the time you're hearing this that the whole drama has been resolved. But

what is resolved, even if there is a speaker, what is this process already done? Has it

already weakened the Republican House majority before it's even gotten to work? Joining me

today's Brendan Buck, he's a Republican advisor who's worked for two speakers of the house,

Paul Ryan and John Boehner. He knows this freedom caucus really well because both Paul

Ryan and John Boehner are not speaker because of them. Brendan, welcome back to the

podcast. Thank you, Chuck. All right. Look, I am trying to be sensitive to the fact that this

is an ongoing story and maybe miraculously in the next six or eight hours, there's a

speaker of the house. But does it even matter? Like at this point, how weak is this

gavill when it's handed to whom ever the Republicans finally decide to hand it to?

Yeah. And if you want to take the big picture of you of this, obviously we are in extraordinary

territory. But also for someone like me, it feels like the natural end of a long process.

Like at some point, this conflict had to happen. And we've had the freedom caucus. We've

had this rump group of members for 10 or 12 years now.

Basically, since the 2010 class, right? These folks came into the 2010 class. Yes, arguably.

And they've evolved over time. I wouldn't say the Tea Party is a natural, exactly the same

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