The Race Is On

News broke yesterday evening that state House Speaker Pro Tempore Mark Burkhalter, R-Johns Creek, sent an e-mail to the Republican House Caucus saying that he will decline the Speaker's gavel and call a vote to elect a new Speaker first thing in the next session, if not sooner.
Read this Political Insider post to get the details. Peach Pundit also is dedicating all resources to the broad scope of this story.
The Republican House Caucus is reportedly meeting either in Atlanta or at Mercer University some time later this week. I, myself, have no idea whether that could be an appropriate venue for a vote on who will be the next Speaker.
On further consideration, I imagine all these decisions are going to be made on the caucus level before they reach the floor of the House.
But any way you look at it, this story continues to twist and turn and it will be some time before some semblance of normalcy returns to the Gold Dome. And by normalcy I guess I mean unattractive people being treated like supermodels for forty days at the beginning of each year--oh yeah and at some point they'll have to pass a budget or two.
One insider I spoke with characterized the happenings at the Capital as the Republicans eating their young.
This all, of course, elicits questions about how Susan Richardson got before the Fox Five cameras for the television blurb that brought Speaker Glenn Richardson's downfall. But being One Capital Removed, we have nothing but wild speculation on that so there's no point in validating negative critiques of the mainstream media.