WASHINGTON—As the hall’s lights flickered and the floor trembled for minutes on end, sources confirmed that great torrents of blood ran down the walls of the House of Representatives Monday as the chamber itself selected a new speaker. According to reports, the blood flooded the chamber’s upper gallery and then spilled over onto the speaker’s rostrum, at which point the name “Peter Roskam,” intoned in an unholy growl that seemed to rise from the very depths of damnation, could be heard reverberating throughout the Capitol. Witnesses told reporters that after hearing his name called, the Illinois Republican and chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight was visibly shaking as he walked alone to the front of the chamber and seated himself in the blood-drenched speaker’s chair. At press time, House Republicans had decided that Roskam had not been willing enough to take on President Obama and were aggressively seeking his replacement.

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