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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowRepublicans chose Rep. Jim Jordan as their new nominee for House speaker on Friday during internal voting, putting the gavel within reach of the staunch ally of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump.
Jordan, of Ohio, will now try to unite colleagues from the deeply divided House GOP majority around his bid ahead of a floor vote, which could push to next week.
Frustrated House Republicans have been fighting bitterly over whom they should elect to replace the speaker they ousted, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, and the future direction of their party. The stalemate, now in its second week, has thrown the House into chaos, grinding all other business to a halt.
“I think Jordan would do a great job,” McCarthy said ahead of the vote. “We got to get this back on track.”
Attention swiftly turned to Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman and founder of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, as the next potential candidate after Majority Leader Steve Scalise abruptly ended his bid when it became clear holdouts would refuse to back him.
But not all Republicans want to see Jordan as speaker, second in line to the presidency. Overwhelmed and exhausted, anxious GOP lawmakers worry their House majority is being frittered away to countless rounds of infighting and some don’t want to reward Jordan’s wing, which sparked the turmoil.
“If we’re going to be the majority party, we have to act like the majority party,” said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., who posed a last-ditch challenge to Jordan.
While the firebrand Jordan has a long list of detractors who started making their opposition known, Jordan’s supporters said voting against the Trump ally during a public vote on the House floor would be tougher since he is so popular and well known among more conservative GOP voters.
Heading into a morning meeting, Jordan said, “I feel real good.”
Other potential speaker choices were also being floated. Some Republicans proposed simply giving Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who was appointed interim speaker pro tempore, greater authority to lead the House for some time.
The House, without a speaker, is essentially unable to function during a time of turmoil in the U.S. and wars overseas. The political pressure increasingly is on Republicans to reverse course, reassert majority control and govern in Congress.
With the House narrowly split 221-212, with two vacancies, any nominee can lose just a few Republicans before they fail to reach the 217 majority needed in the face of opposition from Democrats, who will most certainly back their own leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
Absences heading into the weekend could lower the majority threshold needed, and Republicans said they were down about a dozen lawmakers as of midday Friday. No floor votes were scheduled as attendance thinned before the weekend.
In announcing his decision to withdraw from the nomination, Scalise said late Thursday the Republican majority still has to come together and “open up the House again. But clearly not everybody is there.”
Asked if he would throw his support behind Jordan, Scalise said, “It’s got to be people that aren’t doing it for themselves and their own personal interest.”
But Jordan’s allies swung into high gear at a chance for the hard-right leader to seize the gavel.
“Make him the speaker. Do it tonight,” said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind. “He’s the only one who can unite our party.”
Jordan also received an important nod Friday from the Republican party’s campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who made an attempt to unify the fighting factions.
“Removing Speaker Kevin McCarthy was a mistake,” Hudson wrote on social media, saying the party found itself at a crossroads also blocking Scalise. “We must unite around one leader.”
Earlier in the week, Jordan had nominally dropped out of the race he initially lost to Scalise, 113-99, during internal balloting.
Scalise had been laboring to peel off more than 100 votes, mostly from those who backed Jordan. But many hard-liners taking their cues from Trump have dug in for a prolonged fight to replace McCarthy after his historic ouster from the job.
The holdouts argued that as majority leader, Scalise was no better choice, that he should be focusing on his health as he battles cancer and that he was not the leader they would support.
Handfuls of Republicans announced they were sticking with Jordan, McCarthy or someone other than Scalise—including Trump, the former president. The position as House speaker does not need to go to a member of Congress.
Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, repeatedly discussed Scalise’s health during a radio interview that aired Thursday.
Scalise has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is being treated, but he has also said he was definitely up for the speaker’s job.
On Friday, another California Republican, Rep. Tom McClintock, had introduced a motion to reinstate McCarthy during the morning meeting, but it was shelved.
“I just told them, no, let’s not do that,” McCarthy said afterward. “Let’s walk through this and have an election.”
The situation is not fully different from the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far-right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall.
But the math this time is even more daunting, and the problematic political dynamic is only worsening.
Exasperated Democrats, who have been waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthy’s ouster, urged them to figure it out.
“The House Democrats have continued to make clear that we are ready, willing and able to find a bipartisan path forward,” Jeffries said, including doing away with the rule that allows a single lawmaker to force a vote against the speaker. “But we need traditional Republicans to break from the extremists and partner with us.”
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Trump and Jordan. Two peas in a pod. If you think the last few weeks exposed the Republicans in the House of Representatives as incompetent, just wait until the Trump-Jordan agenda becomes clear heading into the 2024 elections. The Democrats couldn’t ask for a better gift.
negotiating with terrorists remains a bad idea. Let’s hope the moderate Republicans vote for Jeffries.
Indeed, Joe, the left’s increasing struggles to suppress a significant portion of their parties’ sympathies with Hamas are going to make it hard for them not to face backlash among some of the Dems’ biggest donors. And that’s not even capturing their utter indifference to home-grown AntiFA terrorism that continues to fester and bring certain cities to their knees.
At least virtually all the fighting taking place in our National Second Civil War is coming from the party that initiates 95% of the violence most of the time. Keep slaughtering one another, please and thank you.
And I’m moderate enough to recognize that, if the right had so effectively ideologically captured institutions the way the left has, they’d be just as violent as the left is today. But the right hasn’t had such control since probably the pre-colonial, Puritan era. Now the moral puritanism is coming from the party that does most of the canceling. And most of the rioting. And still believes themselves morally, culturally, and intellectually superior. Imagine that.
Yes, Lauren, they have no control over institutions like the Supreme Court which is in the midst of rolling that Puritan era back. But I do think they’ll wait to overturn Loving vs. Virginia until after Thomas leaves. Out of respect and all, of course.
But full credit to the right. They figured out how to maintain that corporate oligarchy you so profess to loathe … for a good long time. Minority rule shall continue. They’ll be coming for your rights next, just you wait. Just don’t act surprised.
Myself, I’m more worried that we can’t send enough air and military support to Israel because House Republicans are children and because an accidental Senator from Alabama Is throwing a tantrum. Vladmir must be so happy at the outcome of his efforts, I bet Gaetz has a medal with his name on it. But keep on worrying about Portland.
I wonder if anyone that wrestled at The Ohio State University would vote for him…..
Yeah….Jordan will face the same problems McCarthy did. Republicans are a mess…..but Democrats???
The party that seeks to kill black babies in the womb first, but if they are born, makes sure they die in the streets, then blames the gun and the NRA instead of there own sick “values”?
The party that winks at the border and gets funds from sex and drug traffickers?
The party that thinks Joe Biden is honest?
The party that tries to silence opposition?
The party that still thinks Communism is good?
The party that hates the military?
I remember when folks like John were the lunatic fridge of the Republican Party and serious adult people made sure they stayed that way.
As opposed to the current Republican Party, where the leadership espouses this kind of nonsense.
“Hates the military”
Yeah, Democrats don’t love the military like Tuberville, do they John?
John’s favorite beverage is Kool Ade, which he guzzles at every opportunity. And he still IS a member of the lunatic fringe.
lol silence the opposition
Were watching dozens of court cases unraveling voter oppression in the south
Frankie – they’ve gone from a party of ideas to a party of projection, generally 400x more guilty themselves of whatever they accuse others of.
Witness the screaming about CRT and indoctrinating children… yet what is actually happening? Book banning and threatening librarians with felonies for not agreeing with their world view.
The only books that have become difficult to purchase in the last five years are the following:
– On Beyond Zebra
– And to Think that they Saw it on Mulberry Street
– McElligot’s Pool
– If I Ran the Zoo
– The Cat’s Quizzer
– Scrambled Eggs Super!
Every one of these books now commands collector’s items prices on Amazon. They are basically black-market products now, as the family estate caved to the woke lynch mob.
The other “banned” books? All available at Amazon (usually used copies dirt-cheap), Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore (often in a pile for “banned books”, suggesting these literary types don’t understand irony), or even most municipal libraries.
CRT is just Confederate Lost Cause Theory repurposed. No surprise that the same party who initiated Lost Cause is trying to revive those sentiments by simply reversing the victim/aggressor dichotomy.
Please issue a correction. The Vice President is second in line to the presidency.
“But not all Republicans want to see Jordan as speaker, second in line to the presidency. Overwhelmed and exhausted, anxious GOP lawmakers worry their House majority is being frittered away to countless rounds of infighting and some don’t want to reward Jordan’s wing, which sparked the turmoil.”
You’re wrong.
“The U.S. Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 outline the presidential order of succession. The line of succession of cabinet officers is in the order of their agencies’ creation.
Vice President
Speaker of the House
President Pro Tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State
Secretary of the Treasury”
https://www.usa.gov/presidential-succession
The pivotal words are “in line”. The VP is first in line and the Speaker is second in line.
Democrats and the few sane Republicans still there could install the only honest Republican Liz Cheney to put the House in order to at least a functional level.