Or ten of them voting "present." Every "present" vote lowers the threshold for Speaker. After 10 votes for "present," Jeffries would reach the threshold. This way, the Republicans could insist that they were just protesting their conference being unable to get it together and they totally didn't want to elect Jeffries (aka plausible deniability).
If anything, the Republicans would benefit from the Democrats being in charge. Why can't they pass any conservative bills? The Democrats are in charge. Why does X problem exist? The Democrats are in charge (even if that's not the real reason). No matter how well the Democrats did, the Republicans would claim it wasn't good enough and they'd do better - without giving specifics. This is their ideal situation, not actually being in charge.
Or ten of them voting "present." Every "present" vote lowers the threshold for Speaker. After 10 votes for "present," Jeffries would reach the threshold. This way, the Republicans could insist that they were just protesting their conference being unable to get it together and they totally didn't want to elect Jeffries (aka plausible deniability).
If anything, the Republicans would benefit from the Democrats being in charge. Why can't they pass any conservative bills? The Democrats are in charge. Why does X problem exist? The Democrats are in charge (even if that's not the real reason). No matter how well the Democrats did, the Republicans would claim it wasn't good enough and they'd do better - without giving specifics. This is their ideal situation, not actually being in charge.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them didn't even know that was a thing.