Crossing Jordan

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) seeks the speakership. Photo: Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Here’s a brilliant idea: 

Take out the only Speaker who can command nearly all of his own GOP conference, but with no plan for succession;

Hold a behind-closed-doors nominations process that puts up his second-in-command, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who described himself as “David Duke without the baggage”;

Watch the same factions that took out the prior Speaker lead to Scalise’s withdrawal of his candidacy;

Nominate an even more extremist candidate, Rep. Jim Jordan, the second House GOP leader embroiled in a wrestling team sexual abuse scandal, who is himself a MAGA insurrectionist supporter, and enjoys far less support than either of the ones you tossed aside;

Realize (duh) that you really don’t have the votes to elect this new, radical MAGA leader and are probably at least 20 members short; and

Then press ahead anyway by bullying and threatening anyone who crosses Jordan and announce a House floor vote for Tuesday to name, shame and blame them.

Great plan, GOP! Today I’ll talk more about that last bit, which is rather a scary development on top of the existing dysfunction and chaos. Before I do that, however, let’s review the stakes quickly about why all this disarray by the party in charge of the House is coming at a terrible time. 

Why a Speakerless House is a terrible thing

The House basically has one very important job. It has to approve funding of the federal government. In fact, Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution requires any bills with revenue-affecting potential to originate in the House, not the Senate. That’s why you often see much handwringing about the fate of a dozen appropriations bills, most of which are languishing in the House without forward action.

That forward action requires the Speaker. Why? Under the way the House rules currently operate, only the Speaker has the power to move legislation through to the floor via the powerful Rules Committee, which is typically dominated by allies of the Speaker. No speaker, no legislation.

There are a few cumbersome ways around this, including a so-called “discharge petition” that would need a majority of House members to get a bill out of committee and straight to the House floor. But this is rarely used because it takes a really long time. Short of a rules change (more on that below), bills simply can’t move forward effectively without the Speaker’s say-so.

That means the budget, which is still without its various appropriations bills, will not pass so long as no one is in charge. It also means key aid bills to allies such as Israel and Ukraine cannot pass either, at a time when they really need the funds. The Pentagon, for example, wants to ship a huge amount of munitions to both countries and then use money earmarked by Congress to restore its stocks. But it can’t do that yet because there is no aid bill for either country, despite the vast majority of Congressmembers wanting to support both allies.

Jordan Sparks… anger

Rep. Jordan’s quest to become Speaker makes little sense when you look at the numbers he’s received so far in secret balloting. A fairly unknown opponent, Austin Scott (R-GA), who was put up as a “moderate” alternative to Jordan, received 81 votes to Jordan’s 124. So, according to Politico, they held another round of balloting to see whether members would support or oppose Jordan in an open House floor vote. A full 55 said they would not and still others didn’t even vote.

What’s a MAGA extremist to do? It’s rather predictable and sad, actually. Over the weekend, Jordan’s allies took to the airwaves and social media to harass and harangue members who, they believed, were “no” votes on Jordan ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled House vote. Because Jordan—who somehow received not only an endorsement but the Presidential Medal of Freedom from ex-president Trump—is an accomplished information warrior, his message to the holdouts was clear and carried an edge: Vote for me or else.

As the New York Times reported,

Amy Kremer, a political activist affiliated with the Tea Party movement and Mr. Trump who also leads Women for America First, which organized a “Stop the Steal” rally in 2021, posted a hit list of 12 members on Friday. She listed their office phone numbers and urged her followers to call them and tell them to support Mr. Jordan. The list included Representatives Ann Wagner of Missouri, Mike Rogers of Alabama and Carlos Gimenez of Florida, all of whom have publicly stated their opposition to Mr. Jordan.

Jordan’s supporters also deployed press allies like Sean Hannity, who reached out via his production team. “Sources tell Hannity that Rep. xxxx is not supporting Rep. Jim Jordan for Speaker. Can you please tell me if this is accurate?” asked one widely circulated email from Hannity’s producers. One lawmaker called the concerted push to sway Jordan opponents as “counterproductive.”

Online, troll accounts such as “End Wokeness” called upon its members to flood the phone numbers of holdouts such as GOP Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), who they claimed “is currently working with Democrats to elect a uniparty House Speaker instead of Rep. Jim Jordan.” 

Another member’s chief of staff reported that his congressman’s offices are being deluged with calls, even though he already supports Jordan. And Rep. Matt Gaetz (F-FL), who set off the chaos by moving to topple Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, is now throwing shade at the speaker pro tempore, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), because some lawmakers are talking about expanding his powers temporarily so that bills can get passed.

But there is a strong risk of backlash to this strategy. Even very conservative members of the House who support Jordan are warning against the bullying and are worried about hardening the opposition. As “somebody who wants Jim Jordan, the dumbest thing you can do is to continue pissing off those people and entrench them,” remarked Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX).

With a full House vote now scheduled for Tuesday, Jordan’s opponents are getting organized. Rather than just an up-down vote on Jordan, they are vowing to set up a challenger, though they haven’t settled on a name. The presence of another choice will give cover to those who want an option other than Jordan—but this poor sacrificial lamb is likely to take lots of MAGA fire for daring to oppose the extremist candidate. Just a thought: Maybe they should pick someone who isn’t a current House member.

If a random challenger bent on peeling away votes from a nominated Speaker sounds familiar, that’s because it happened to McCarthy back in January, when it took 15 rounds to get him elected. Only this time, it’s not the far-right and the Freedom Caucus throwing wrenches into the gears, it’s the allies of McCarthy and Scalise, and members of the Problem Solvers and Main Street caucuses, who really don’t want to see Jordan elected.

These GOP members know that a Jordan speakership will likely lead to severe paralysis in government or another collapse of GOP House leadership should Jordan compromise to prevent a shutdown. They also know that his extremism will likely play so badly to the American public that they will lose their House majority in November.

Any way out?

As the New York Times noted, Rep. Jordan faces a tall challenge. He has to hope the GOP holdouts will cave publicly rather than face a Trump-endorsed candidate with support of the MAGA base. If it still looks like he doesn’t have the votes, Jordan could postpone the floor roll-call, as he did last Friday. Or he could try the McCarthy method of successive, embarrassing defeats and concession after concession to scrape his way to a win—knowing full well that those concessions could mean loss of support from the far-right if they go too far for them. 

Or he could just drop out like Scalise.

Another option is to give current Speaker pro tempore McHenry a bigger gavel to bang, empowering him beyond his ministerial tasks to actually move legislation through. A few Democrats have approached McHenry with this option, which is probably why Rep. Gaetz is trolling him.

For their part, Democrats remain united and aligned behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has consistently signaled a willingness to work with the GOP on a bipartisan solution. But this would mean “government by consensus,” which has never been tried in the House before and seems anathema to the GOP, which doesn’t fundamentally believe in good governance in the first place. Plus, that would mean big compromises that few if any Republicans could bring themselves to support.

Just for yucks…

Because it’s Monday and hope springs eternal, let’s perform a thought experiment and imagine what such a beautiful, functional and bipartisan world would look like. Here’s a bit of what Democrats could and should demand in exchange for their support of a more moderate, problem-solving Speaker.

First, Congress would eliminate the “motion to vacate” rule that currently allows a single member to force a no-confidence vote in the Speaker. That was the sword hanging over McCarthy that led him to back all of the extremists’ demands out of fear he’d be tossed out. Instead, only a majority of the party in control of the House could cause a motion like that to happen. 

Second, there would have to be some kind of power-sharing agreement to move House bills to the floor, say, by dividing power evenly on the Rules Committee. Or perhaps only bills with at least 60 percent support from all members could move out of the Committee while the unity Speaker is in place. That would solve the budget and the funding questions immediately.

Third, as Greg Sargent of the Washington Post suggests, they could even demand a repeal of the debt limit threat, which has been weaponized by the far-right members and led to dangerous standoffs, and prevent government shutdowns by extending current funding levels, adjusted for inflation, in the event a budget is not reached.

I don’t expect the GOP to begin to compromise seriously, however, until the pressure from within grows too great to manage. That might only happen after Jordan’s quest for the Speakership ends in flames, just like Scalise’s and very nearly McCarthy’s. The GOP appears only able to act when it is out of options, even though it seems clear right now that they are already there, yet somehow still need to go through this cannibalistic ritual.

As Donald Trump recently said, misspeaking once again from his teleprompter, “But remember, Republicans eat their young. They really do. They eat their young. Terrible statement, but it’s true.”