Bowing to reality and a vote of no confidence, Jim Jordan ends his bid for Speaker

Insur­rec­tion­ist enabler Jim Jor­dan of Ohio will not become the next Speak­er of the Unit­ed States of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the House Repub­li­can cau­cus has decided.

Jor­dan’s cam­paign for the post came to an abrupt and humil­i­at­ing end when he unex­pect­ed­ly lost an inter­nal vote, con­duct­ed by secret bal­lot, to answer the ques­tion of whether he should remain the con­fer­ence’s nom­i­nee after fail­ing to get elect­ed Speak­er on the floor of the House not once, not twice, but thrice.

And that was despite hav­ing the endorse­ment of Don­ald Trump.

Jor­dan had already been expe­ri­enc­ing neg­a­tive momen­tum between those floor votes, with sev­er­al Repub­li­cans pulling their sup­port and leav­ing him well short of the thresh­old of a major­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tives present and vot­ing he need­ed to win. Democ­rats put up their leader, Hakeem Jef­fries, in each round of vot­ing, as expect­ed, and every Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber of the cau­cus sup­port­ed him.

Jor­dan fig­ured he’d buy him­self more time to win over hold­outs by get­ting explic­it per­mis­sion from the cau­cus to keep on cam­paign­ing for Speaker.

It did­n’t work.

Repub­li­cans have a slim major­i­ty in the House this Con­gress and can’t elect a Speak­er them­selves with­out near una­nim­i­ty in their ranks.

That’s a big prob­lem for them, because they are a frac­tured group that does­n’t trust or like each oth­er. In the past, they have tried to keep their feud­ing behind closed doors, but in the last few weeks, their infight­ing has explod­ed into pub­lic view to a degree our team feels is unprece­dent­ed. Many have demon­strat­ed an increased will­ing­ness to go on the record and crit­i­cize their fel­low Repub­li­cans, open­ly dis­re­gard­ing the once-sacred “Eleventh Commandment.”

Con­sid­er these on the record comments:

“If you are going to blow a bridge, you bet­ter have anoth­er one to cross. And those eight clear­ly didn’t have anoth­er one to cross before they blew this bridge.”

– Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Waltz (R‑Florida), com­ment­ing on the motion to vacate brought by Matt Gaetz, which eight Repub­li­cans supported

“I don’t think there is a sin­gle per­son in that room that can get 217 votes… Peo­ple are start­ing to real­ize that Kevin McCarthy kept this thing togeth­er with duct tape and sil­ly put­ty. And it’s not as easy as they think.”

– Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kel­ly Arm­strong (R‑North Dako­ta), admit­ting that Repub­li­cans are extreme­ly stuck after the ouster of Kevin McCarthy

“The most pop­u­lar Repub­li­can in Con­gress was just knifed in an anony­mous vote in a secret closed door meet­ing in the base­ment of the Capitol.”

– Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz (R‑Florida), grum­bling that Jor­dan’s gam­bit to keep his bid for Speak­er alive end­ed in a humil­i­at­ing failure

“There’s noth­ing that peo­ple can give us. There’s noth­ing that peo­ple can trade. That’s not what this is about.”

– Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mario Diaz-Balart (R‑Florida), explain­ing that those who are stri­dent­ly against Jor­dan becom­ing Speak­er don’t want any­thing from him or his backers

“One thing I can­not stom­ach, or sup­port is a bul­ly… Some­one who threat­ens anoth­er with bod­i­ly harm or tries to sup­press dif­fer­ing opin­ions under­mines oppor­tu­ni­ty for uni­ty and regard for free­dom of speech.”

– Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­i­an­nette Miller-Meeks (R‑Iowa), decry­ing the death threats she’s received from Jor­dan backers

“I think a lot of these guys play to the clicks. If you live in an echo cham­ber and you’re only talk­ing to peo­ple that agree with you, I think, well, you have an unre­al­is­tic view of what’s going on, then.”

– Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Don Bacon (R‑Nebraska) describ­ing many of his ultra MAGA col­leagues, who have no inter­est in governing

And then there was this from Flori­da’s ultra MAGA Gov­er­nor Ron DeSantis:

“Look, I think it’s unfor­tu­nate that these guys can’t get their act togeth­er,” said Mr. DeSan­tis, a Repub­li­can run­ning for pres­i­dent who once served in the House. “It’s like the gang that can’t shoot straight. They’ve been run­ning around like chick­ens with their heads cut off. It’s not inspir­ing con­fi­dence. There’s a lot of theater.”

Polit­i­cal the­ater is actu­al­ly noth­ing new — it’s been part of the Repub­li­can M.O. for a very long time. What is new is the utter dys­func­tion and degree to which the infight­ing is on dis­play for every­one to see. Most of what seems to unite these Repub­li­cans is what they don’t like — e.g. Pres­i­dent Biden and Demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies. They objec­tive­ly lack ideas to help the coun­try and haven’t done much leg­is­lat­ing since they got con­trol of the House of Representatives.

If we look back at what’s hap­pened so far this year — and you can browse NPI’s archive of Last Week In Con­gress for vote data — we can see the House just has­n’t done very much. It’s an insti­tu­tion lurch­ing from cri­sis to crisis.

There was the strug­gle to elect Kevin McCarthy that start­ed every­thing in Jan­u­ary, there was the pas­sage of some bills dead on arrival in the Sen­ate that were designed to stoke the cul­ture wars Repub­li­cans want to wage, there was the debt ceil­ing deal, there was the base­less impeach­ment inquiry, and then more recent­ly, there was the pas­sage of the con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion to keep the gov­ern­ment open, plus some “inves­ti­ga­tions” launched by  to gen­er­ate anti-Biden media coverage.

In between, there have been only a few small pol­i­cy wins here and there that got bipar­ti­san and some­times even unan­i­mous sup­port, like Ruben Gal­le­go’s Native Amer­i­can Child Pro­tec­tion Act, which passed in September.

When Democ­rats had tri­fec­ta con­trol in the last Con­gress, they got a lot done, despite hav­ing only slim majori­ties them­selves. The list is long — it includ­ed the Infra­struc­ture and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Sci­ence Act, the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act, the Respect for Mar­riage Act, the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, the Postal Ser­vice Reform Act, and the Elec­toral Count Reform and Pres­i­den­tial Tran­si­tion Improve­ment Act. That’s just a sam­pling — there’s much more.

There was no who’ll be our Speak­er sideshow in the last Congress.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi, who Repub­li­cans love to denounce, ran a tight ship, as always, and made sure that the votes were count­ed before bring­ing motions or leg­is­la­tion to the floor. Her suc­ces­sor, Hakeem Jef­fries, hopes that vot­ers remem­ber how dys­func­tion­al Repub­li­cans have been this Con­gress when they’re decid­ing who should rep­re­sent them in the House in 2024.

So do oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic leaders.

“Before most Amer­i­cans have even fin­ished their work week, House Repub­li­cans have already giv­en them­selves an ear­ly start to the week­end after only get­ting fur­ther away from putting out their own dump­ster fire,” said Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee Chair Jaime Har­ri­son in a statement.

“It seemed like the Chaos Con­fer­ence reached rock bot­tom 17 days ago when they oust­ed their own speak­er, but the House GOP spent the last two and a half weeks only fur­ther prov­ing to the Amer­i­can peo­ple that they are unfit to gov­ern. Instead of work­ing to avoid a loom­ing gov­ern­ment shut­down or sup­port­ing our allies in Israel and Ukraine, House Repub­li­cans have shame­ful­ly thrown in the tow­el – before what will inevitably be anoth­er long week of new lows.”

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve better.”