Can Jim Jordan, the lunatic conservative endorsed by Donald Trump, become Speaker of the House after all?
Jim Jordan rolled out several key endorsements in his bid for speaker on Monday, a surprising turn that has some in his party privately believing the Ohio Republican has a shot after all.
....On Friday, Jordan’s fight for the gavel seemed treacherous, with 55 House Republicans stating on a secret ballot that they will oppose him on the House floor. That included many angry Scalise backers.
But Jordan’s allies kicked off a pressure campaign, posting the office phone numbers of holdouts online — directing the rage of the base and conservative media personalities. And it appears to have had success.
If this happens—which is still iffy—it will be a victory for Matt Gaetz and the MAGA wing of the party. They've developed a well-earned reputation for refusing to compromise even if the world burns, and that forces moderates to cave in because they do care if the world burns.
Of course, the "moderates" could negotiate with Democrats over a compromise choice, but they consider that worse than settling for an ultracon like Jordan. So maybe they aren't really moderates after all. They're just wimps.
So we've gone from everyone being sure that Republicans could never agree on electing a Speaker to growing realization that the most extreme part of the Republican caucus has the rest of the party in its pocket. It's something that should have been expected since it happened so many times before, but people don't seem to learn.
Jim Jordan's machiavellian scheming is like two knuckle bones rattling inside a chimp skull, so of course they're all on his brainwave.
" So maybe they aren't really moderates after all. They're just wimps."
They are actually moderate, but are scared of the MAGA.
Whether that makes them wimps is another question. The MAGA will try to burn their houses (and worse if needed) if they vote for a Democrat, and they have to think of that.
More accurately, they're scared of being primaried by MAGA crazies.
In many cases I believe that they genuinely are afraid of physical attack on their persons, their families, and their property. "Burn their houses" is NOT a metaphor.
Unfortunately it isn't just political peril for people who get fingered by the MAGA noise machine. They stand to get what the Georgia poll workers got for a start, and worse. The death threats aren't just noise. And even if you got them and were sure they were just noise, how certain could you really be about that? It's a big country and there are a lot of armed nuts out there.
So, what you're saying is that we're absolutely headed to a shutdown next month and if Biden wins again in 2024 then all hell is going to break loose (regardless of who ends up being the R nominee).
I guess we should all buckle up.
Roger that on buckling up! At base I do think a lot of Jordan's short-term game is the same as trump's-- whatever it takes to stop the damn investigations and prosecutions because after all Jordan's involved in January 6 up to his eyeballs and has his own reasons to kill all that.
I wouldn't be entirely sure whether he'll go at that full tilt in public right off the bat. He might want to negotiate for it via threats behind the scenes if he wants to look more reasonable. But that hasn't been his style. He's a wrestler and it's always been his MO to overwhelm and go for the pin right away.
So yes, I'd guess at least 80% for a shutdown, and 60-75% shooting the works with shutdown, slashing budget cuts, maybe a little wiggling on Ukraine aid, lots of chest-pounding and yelling and no action.
Then a Dem can move to vacate and we can rinse, repeat with more pressure on the "moderate" gop collaborationists.
Others already replied, but I think this needs to be emphasized:
Primaries are an issue, but not the main problem for the moderate Republican members. It is physical violence.
If they are remaining in a political party whose members threaten their homes and families, they are despicable cowards.
+1
If it happens, I think this will be gloriously hilarious. The House of MAGA will burn down and Gym Jordan will finally be forced to resign.
No Republican will be forced to resign from a Congress in which their party holds such a slim majority. They’ll change the rules to allow George Santos to vote from jail.
Liz Cheney:
John Boehner (asked why he called some members "political terrorists"):
Comforting to know not every Republican is a Jim Jordan fan. But the ones in office all fold like a cheap suit.
Three ifs and a question:
1) If Jordan gets the job...
2) If he keeps the job...
3) If Dems don't win the House in '24...
Q) What are the odds the House certifies the EV count even if Biden wins the election fair and square?
A: Zero. By that point they will have learned that decency and respect for norms don't matter to their base.
The chances depend on the probability that Rs win the House in 2024 while also controlling a majority of delegations. Which of course is more likely than Ds controlling states with a minority of the body.
If Jordan should get his mitts on the gavel, I don't foresee that he will accomplish anything other than steering budget negotiations into the ditch. A solid year of no results won't help GOP prospects in 2024.
Yeah, Jordan will absolutely send things into a shutdown to force their budget priorities. How all that plays out will be interesting and painful. Will the dems cave or not?
A solid year of no results won't help GOP prospects in 2024.
It might, if the economic damage is sufficiently large. The years 2010-2016 give us little reason to hope the US electorate can accurately assign responsibility.
This is my biggest fear. If you make the mistake of reading your local neighborhood on NextDoor you will see how separated from reality these people are.
The asylum should have one of their own as leader. Won't really change the dynamic in the house since any speaker who needs Democrats to pass something (like paying the troops or keeping the lights on in the Capital building), will likely be deposed.
Gym Jorden will make a far better fundraising tool for the Democrats than McCarthy, and they will target all the so called moderate GOP members who vote for him as part of the MAGA / insurrectionist clan.
Good old Gym has one of the most punchable faces in Congress, rivaling Ted Cruz's ugly puss.
When the government shuts down a lot of people won't have the money to donate
And Governor Youngkin can kiss his Virginia dreams goodbye
The CR was enacted to purposefully go past Election Day in Virginia to project governor fleece vest. UGH. But I'm cautiously optimistic that the Democrats will be in control of both statehouses after the election.
Except that the Democrats aren't (seriously) asking them to vote for a Democrat. If the moderates R's can get a majority of their party to vote for a moderate, sane Republican who gave them a small list of concessions -- like not shutting down the government, aid for Ukraine & Israel, sticking to the agreed upon spending bill limits, not enabling Matt Gaetz on his own to successfully call for a vote on vacating the Speakership, and maybe a few more items -- the Democrats could just vote "present" and let a Speaker be voted in with just a majority of Republican votes.
That the Republicans can't even manage that, however, is pretty telling of how dysfunctional they've become.
This is apparently the sort of thing that kept Ken Paxton from getting removed from office. It is shameful. The spectacle and threat of political violence is ever present with Jordan, and now we're going to make him Speaker?
The fact that Jim Jordan is a lunatic isn't the real problem. The problem is that he has the moral fiber of a pre-2000's Catholic bishop, totally willing to look the other way while his peers molest children.
The question of whether Matt Gaetz gets expelled depends *entirely* on Jim Jordan's success is his quest for the gavel.
Most MAGA voters don’t care about lunacy or rape. They don’t care about anything that doesn’t personally affect them, and love sowing chaos and cruelty into everything that doesn’t personally affect them.
Yet ironically so many are into the Qanon conspiracy theories about huge child molestation rings and that guy who was "rescuing victims of human trafficking" but was actually doing trafficking himself!
So let's see, what makes an effective Speaker?
-- Of unimpeachable character. (Um, no.)
-- Willingness to negotiate. (Obviously no.)
-- Ability to negotiate. (Doesn't appear so.)
-- Ability to pass bills. (Evidently not.)
-- Unites his caucus. (Hahaha, no.)
-- Willingness sometimes to let others take credit. (Oh HELL no!)
So yeah, the perfect Republican candidate. Incompetent, ineffective, always grandstanding, and perpetually angry.
Yes. In today's GOP, incompetence itself is qualifying. Bankrupt multiple businesses, get elected to run the country (into the ground).
McCarthy seems notably slicker than Jordan at PR.
I can see Jordan overreaching and taking the Rs down pretty fast by shutting down the government until all homeless people are burned alive etc etc.
Jordan’s incentives are different though. He’s probably smart enough to realize his only play at some point in the fairly near future is working for Leonard Leo for $1million/year or similar. McCarthy probably sees his future more in being a regular pol. I would guess.
Don’t assume the voters gerrymandered into the red districts will be turned off at all by a government shutdown or the images of homeless people being burned alive. There are at least 74m absolutely batshit insane people in this country, most of whom are totally down with chaos and cruelty.
On second thought maybe I'm totally wrong and Jordan is actually better at post-Trump-style PR where you do whatever (like cut business taxes) and then just lie endlessly about it (I'm the greatest thing that ever happened to the forgotten American etc etc). Maybe McCarthy was a little too institutional in that sense. I really don't know.
"Jordan’s incentives are different though. He’s probably smart enough to .."
Jordan's main incentive is to make sure Trump is on his side. So he will do what he can to help Trump eliminate democracy in the US, and that is what makes him so dangerous.
The only that would be improved by his speakership is the augmentation of the screams as the ship of state descends into the maelstrom.
I called it Friday.
Jungle Jim has already tried to interfere with Fani Willis on his own, what would he try to do with the entire House to attack her with?
"The role of a speaker is to bring all Republicans together" opens a paragraph of Jordan's "dear colleague" letter today. A mighty narrow vision, but let that pass for now-- because his buds have been bragging to the media all weekend about how they're strong-arming the doubters. Not just harangues, cajoling, wheedling, but threats in the background, implied, or maybe even more open. Everywhere with Jordan is the affect of trench-coated hoods in shades and fedoras, slapping blackjacks into their open palms as a sign of what's to come.
Marcy Wheeler calls this kind of thing "stochastic violence." Put the menace out there, and who knows, some rando will actually follow through for any reason or no reason.
So between that and the direct threats, sure, I expect most if not all Rs to line up behind him tomorrow night, like this: Jim Jordan is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life (because that's what he told me to say).
I also expect a Jordan HR to use the shutdown threat, aid for Ukraine, and Israeli aid as leverage for something like calling off the trump investigations and prosecutions. These hostages are too good to pass up. I look for a long siege around that.
Anything less than that would actually be a pleasant surprise.
So even in Congress, members of the GOP rule by using a mob. I guess we can expect more of this MO.
Shouldn’t Gym’s shirt be brown?
Politico: “Anyone who votes against Jordan on the floor could sustain heavy criticism among GOP base voters.”
base adjective — morally low; without estimable personal qualities; dishonorable; meanspirited; selfish; cowardly. of little or no value; worthless
Do you think Politico knows words can have more than one meaning?
Nice catch
So maybe they aren't really moderates after all. They're just wimps.
Spinelessness, cowardice, and an almost treasonous disregard for the common good are practically award categories in the current GOP.
"Spinelessness, cowardice, and an almost treasonous disregard for the common good"
These are their three main weapons. Those and a fanatical devotion to the pope. Four, four main weapons! I'll come in again.
People don't understand that most GOP have no clue about Gym Jordan's past. Their information is filtered.
This is why I hope he wins. He'll be forced to resign from Congress.
Moderate Republicans always fold, because they are indeed wimps. That's why they can't criticize Trump, even for January 6, and that's why they'll go along with Gym J.
The aim of the Chaos Caucus was never to get concessions in return for not shutting down the government, it was to demand concessions so extreme that they could not possibly pass the Senate, leading inevitably to shutting down the government. Their mistake was, they didn't have the votes in the House to pass the poison-laced bill. I'm not sure that they will back their own guy Tuesday, because leaving the Speaker's chair vacant will get them their shutdown.
That's pretty much where I was but then reports today are that the pressure campaign has been working. Could be disinfo, but reporters name names of never-Jordanites who've flipped. With Hannity making calls for Jordan I have to figure the direct trump pressure is full-on and probably includes a few Raffensperger-esque calls from trump himself so I put it at better than 50-50 for Jordan now. A tight vote in any event.
For trump the main reason for pushing Jordan so hard would be a shot at something even better than complete stasis, namely holding the federal budget, together with the Ukrainians and the Israelis, hostage in return for calling off the investigations and prosecutions. He's not a deep or long-term thinker and these seem to bother him deeply right now so it could seem a plausible gamble to him. And if everybody tells him to fuck off, as they should, then he still gets the chaos so it's a win-win. Either way that goes, Jordan's the man to do his bidding just the way he likes it, nice and aggressive. 'Cos that's how Jordan rolls.
You make a good case. Still, it takes only a handful of ‘noes’ to deny him the office.
"... in return for calling off the investigations and prosecutions. "
He is also thinking of how to overturn the elections in 2024, and look for actions that the current House can take to help him in that. There are probably no proper ways in which they can help on that, but they may find improper ways of doing it.
The great majority of white Americans fully support all this. They don't understand it, but they know that Democrats are against it, so they fully support it.
A vast segment of Americans don't know a damned thing about Jim Jordan. Maybe they know his name, and that's about it.
If he gets the job and shuts down the government, they'll know him all right.
A recent poll had Jordan getting 41% support among Republicans. No, "the great majority of white Americans" don't "fully support this." You can leave white out of it.
I doubt this very much. Maybe a plurality might but not a "great majority".
seems like we should just apply the highly accurate heuristic that republicans will almost always do the worst possible thing and expect jordan will become speaker.