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.
Because the GOP have mastered the strategy of using threats, violence, and intimidation to make positions of authority untenable for those who are actually interested in governing and putting in the work, leaving behind only the authoritarian wannabes to fill the void.
Jordan is here because the MAGA wing have successfully intimidated the rest of the party into submission, to the point where no “sane” republican would go within a mile of that gavel even if they were wearing a hazmat suit.
Any R with remaining moderate leanings is worried about being primaried by a Freedom Caucus type. This threat is how desantis has gotten the Florida legislature to do anything he wants.