Patrick McHenry is a human C.R.

The best way to understand the new Republican plan to get out of their leadership mess by temporarily elevating Patrick McHeny as speaker through January is this: They want to make him a human C.R.

Congress does not have a lot of historic experience dealing with one party’s complete inability to name a speaker. But they do have a lot of experience coming up with band-aid solutions ahead of a deadline, and right now the government is set to shut down in 29 days and the House can’t even vote on a patch without picking a speaker. Elevating McHenry would fit right into that comfort zone.

The government almost shut down last month ahead of a September 30 deadline, but the House passed a “C.R.,” which is short for “continuing resolution.” It’s a measure that funds the government when Congress can’t agree on a broader deal through the normal budget process, which happens constantly. They’re considered a short-term fix that mostly leaves the status quo in place while they work on a solution, but they have a tendency to get passed over and over again, even dozens of times, because there just isn’t enough momentum to break the impasse.

Conservative frustration over the constant C.R. spin cycle has been a central theme in the repeated civil war over who should be speaker. But they also serve an obvious purpose: They provide a face-saving way out of an intractable debate that would otherwise cause a protracted government shutdown. Nobody is conceding too much, they’re just returning to their corners to take up the discussion again later.

The problem Republicans have now is that this approach is breaking down. They do not have a governing majority to pass critical bills that are attached to a deadline — raising the debt ceiling, funding the government, reauthorizing must-pass legislation. This inevitably requires their speaker to turn to Democrats to make up the gap in crunch time, which was working fine enough until a small-but-critical mass went even further by forcing a vote that removed the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

That split is repeating itself now in the speaker’s race. A rump of conservatives want hardliner Rep. Jim Jordan to be speaker and scuttled the conference’s first choice of Majority Steve Scalise to get him in position. But a coalition of more traditional Republicans is opposed and they have strong incentive to hold their ground — in addition to jeopardizing their various policy goals, picking Jordan would mean fully conceding that as few as five members can run the conference unilaterally by ousting a speaker and then demanding everyone agree to their to pick. That leaves going to Democrats on a compromise solution.

“Nobody in America can get 217 right now out of the Republican conference,” Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark, a “no” on Jordan, said on CNN. “If that becomes apparent to everybody, then at some point in time, we’re gonna have to work across the aisle.”

But turning to Democrats on a compromise speaker could inflame the conference even more — that’s the kind of vote that can get used against members in primaries and fracture the party further.

So what if there were, say, a temporary way to resolve this situation while everyone works on a final deal? Just let McHenry, who has shown zero interest in being speaker on a permanent basis, preside over the House and keep the lights on until Jan. 3.

That’s exactly what Jordan is proposing right now: He won’t drop out, he’ll keep trying to get 217 votes, but at least the House can move forward on the important stuff.

One problem with this plan is that the same conservatives who oppose legislative C.R.s. immediately recognize that McHenry would become a human C.R. overnight — with all the same incentives to renew him indefinitely.

“We shouldn’t be setting this precedent or this will be the way we elect Speakers from now on,” Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, the leader of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters.

Perry is right that the inertia would be strong: McHenry may not be everyone’s first choice, but he’s vastly preferable to Jordan in the eyes of a large bipartisan majority of the House and there would be enormous pressure to turn one “temporary” resolution making him speaker into another “temporary” resolution later, and so on and so forth. And of course you can’t force a big standoff over funding the government, or Ukraine aid, without a permanent speaker — who would even negotiate it? Better to just hold a vote on whatever the Senate sends over and move on while everyone keeps talking.

There’s still a long way to go until McHenry actually gets the promotion to “Speaker Pro Temporary.” Tensions over the idea are high — a GOP conference this afternoon reportedly devolved into screaming — and Democrats, while clearly interested in a “Human C.R.” option, are likely to ask for concessions to deliver their votes. There are also some very basic questions as to who is speaking for Republicans in talks if they go this route: McHenry? Jordan? Scalise?

But it’s at least a solution that makes some sense, even if it’s absurdly contrived and requires a whole bunch of people to pretend they’re not doing what they’re clearly doing in order to make it work. Conservatives get to gripe, but no longer have to be responsible for must-pass bills like government funding, and potentially aid to Ukraine. More moderate Republicans — many of whom publicly or privately want their bills to look closer to the Senate’s — get to say they haven’t crossed the line into abandoning their party for a true bipartisan coalition. And Democrats get to watch them squirm without taking down the government in the process.

• Politico reports that Democrats are taking a “wait and see” approach to the McHenry debate and want to see what Republicans come to the table with first.
• House Rules Chairman Tom Cole said Thursday he also plans to study — with a cigar on hand — whether McHenry might be able to conduct some simple legislative business with a vote to empower him.