There are some legitimate arguments to be made that some Democrats should have cut a deal with Kevin and voted for him as Speaker or even just voted "present."

The problem is that he went back on the original budget deal agreement and broke it. He went back on saying he would only proceed with an impeachment inquiry after a vote and then didn't put it to a vote, and went ahead with it anyway (Democrats are rightly a bit angry about that). He capped it off with going on the weekend news shows to tell the country that it was the Democrats who were pushing to shut the government down when it was in fact the opposite, the Dems who had saved us from a shutdown.

There was one thing that Gaetz said that was true (as one witty person put it, even a broken clock is right twice a day) and that is that he said both Republicans and Democrats had learned that Kevin does not keep promises and cannot be trusted.

So, there is no question in my mind that if Democrats had negotiated a deal with him to keep him Speaker, he would have thanked them, and then promptly stabbed them in the back in a couple weeks. As the old saying goes, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." My personal opinion is that Dems made a wise choice to not help him.