Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, still faces an uphill climb to the House speakership, with at least 10 to 20 Republican members who oppose his nomination, CBS News has learned, based on background conversations over the weekend with six key House Republicans and more than a dozen sources familiar with the deliberations.
“At least 10 to 20,” one of the House Republicans told CBS News on Sunday, while another added that that Jordan’s support has grown incrementally in recent days but remains soft.
While Jordan’s confidants remain optimistic that he can get to the necessary 217 votes Tuesday, when the House is scheduled to bring a vote to the floor, several who are more critical of Jordan privately insisted this weekend that at about a dozen Republicans remain unwilling to support him, due to their frustrations over how Rep. Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, was treated during his speaker bid and their simmering anger over the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They also are wary of whether Jordan can handle the intensity of the challenges facing Congress in the coming months.
If he’s down to needing “only” 10-20 holdouts, he’s actually gaining significant ground. This should worry you.
The moderates of the party are simply growing tired of all of this and are more likely to vote for him simply because there are no other viable options. The problems with this are: Jim Jordan becomes speaker of the House. The MAGA wing gets rewarded for causing this mess by having one of their own elected speaker once the dust settles, emboldening them to do it again in the future. And it also reinforces how effective the strategy of forcing people out of office by making the position untenable for anyone who actually wants to do the work, leaving only the crazies to fill the void is.
My only real hope is that Jim Jordan is incompetent enough and so hyper-focused on partisan grievance politics that he won’t cause too much damage. That, and he only has just over a year in office. The bad thing is that if you think these people are crazy, remember that they’re simply paving the way for those who will come after them, many of which are even crazier than they are.
I imagine quite a few Republicans are still pissed about McCarthy. So those 10-20 holdouts might be more “Durable” then people think. I don’t mean untouchable mind you, just that pride can be a multiplicative factor…
It is not impossible, but 20 people is a lot of concessions before the tomorrow vote.
I imagine defense contractors and military are anxious to get into Israel and Ukraine funding back on track. Which might be creating more social pressure on the back end in the US.
As one of those partisan grievance issues, I’m terrified of that possibility
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that, but I wouldn’t be too worried.
First, he’s going to be focused on aid to Ukraine and Israel. And while the party’s stance on aid to those countries may be an issue in and of itself, that problem isn’t unique to Jim Jordan, and we’d have the same issues regardless of who is speaker right now.
Then he’s got the debt ceiling thing to figure out. Again, there’s plenty of fuckery to be had, but that would be the case regardless of who is speaker.
And then after that, it’s going to be full-blown “weaponization of government” hearings, Biden’s so-called “impeachment”, doing everything (not actually) in his power to shut down Trump’s criminal trials, and then running his own re-election campaign.
This is all why I say they won’t have any time to do any real damage. Somewhat ironically, the only real reason they won’t be able to do much real damage is because he’ll be too busy focusing on “problems” of their own creation: Support for Israel and Ukraine, the debt ceiling, “Weaponization of Government”, Biden’s "impeachment, and their bending the knee to Trump are all “crises” 100% invented by the GOP. If they weren’t going to be so tied up solving stupid problems of their own creation, then I’d be more concerned.
deleted by creator
That’s exactly my point.
If it were any sane speaker, aid packages to those countries wouldn’t even be an issue. The bill probably would have passed and the supplies already on their way to Israel and Ukraine before the ink even dries. Jordan and his ilk are going to be facing constant pressure to sign off on aid, and he’s going to come up with every excuse he can think of not to give it to them. And with all the pressure and focus on trying to get him to pass an aid package, he won’t have time to do as much domestic damage.
deleted by creator
Trump was able to do that because he already had a celebrity following, and a whole bunch of vultures saw a whole bunch of money in building that wall.
Jordan does not have the following or the charisma that Trump has, and there isn’t a whole hell of a lot of money to be made trying to figure out what else is on Hunter Biden’s laptop or why Twitter suspended one of their accounts again. If he had the support even within his own party, he’d be speaker already.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Completely unrelated, why do you put 3 spaces between sentences? I don’t think I have seen that before. To be clear, I’m not criticizing or anything, just curious.
I’m probably a wee bit older than you. Back when I was learning to type (on clangy old typewriters), that was the standard.
Interesting. I learned to type on a typewriter too, but we did double spaces. I think it was the last year they used typewriters for the class, though, so it probably still comes down to an evolution of standards over the years. Thanks for the answer!
deleted by creator