October 17, 2023 09:41 AM UTC

House Republicans Have Options: All of Them are Bad

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• by: Colorado Pols

House Republicans will attempt today to end two weeks of wasted time in Congress by electing Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan as the next Speaker of the House.

If they succeed in elevating Jordan as House Speaker and second in line to the Presidency, they will likely ensure their place in the minority in 2025.

Two weeks after Republicans made ignominious history by making Kevin McCarthy the first Speaker ever to be ousted by a vote of his peers, one of the architects of McCarthy’s demise will seek to become his successor. Jordan was designated as the newest Speaker nominee in an internal GOP caucus meeting last week, though at the time he was still more than 50 votes short of being able to actually claim the gavel in a floor vote that requires the support of 217 House Members (no Democrat is likely to vote for Jordan). Jordan and his supporters believe they have made sufficient progress among Republican holdouts to force a floor vote today; Jordan believes that any Republican holdouts will cave to public pressure and eventually support him as Speaker if he makes them to vote over and over again (which, ironically, was what McCarthy did in January).

But as many others have pointed out, including Colorado Rep. Jason Crow (D-Aurora), the only thing worse than not having a House Speaker might be giving Jim Jordan the gavel:

Aaron Blake of The Washington Post detailed some of these fundamental Jordan problems in an unintentionally-hilarious column on Monday. In terms of legislative effectiveness, Jordan “has ranked in the bottom quarter of House Republicans in every full Congress he served in…Before this Congress, its data don’t record any bills Jordan sponsored passing or receiving any action — whether in committee or on the floor. ”

[mantra-pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”60%”]“You can choose to govern or destroy, but you can’t do both.”

— Rep. Jason Crow (D-Aurora)[/mantra-pullquote]

For comparison’s sake:

Ousted former speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during Jordan’s tenure has sponsored 17 bills that passed and eight that became law. Five of those laws were regarded as “substantive.”

And House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) during Jordan’s tenure has sponsored eight “substantive” bills that passed, including one that became law.

Here is perhaps the most damning note about Jordan:

Another feature of Jordan’s time in Congress is how little interest he’s shown in bipartisanship. His office has responded to his low effectiveness rankings by pointing to how Politico in 2016 labeled Jordan “arguably the second-most influential Republican in the House.” But that was because of how he “routinely thwarted his own Republican leadership’s priorities in a drive to push his party’s agenda rightward.” [Pols emphasis]

Elevating Jordan to the role of House Speaker would also call into serious question the continued existence of the American democracy. Remember, no other Republican Member of Congress worked harder than Jordan to subvert the results of the 2020 Presidential election in an effort to keep Donald Trump in the White House.

As CNN explains, elevating Jordan to House Speaker is about much more than the man himself:

A Jordan victory would mark one of the most significant milestones in Washington Republicans’ embrace of an extreme right-wing populist, nationalist ideology that is more dedicated to tearing political institutions down than using them to forge change. And it would reward the eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to topple McCarthy. More broadly, it would remove power from the party’s traditional Washington, DC, political establishment, which many of the party’s grassroots voters despise, and place the Freedom Caucus at the pinnacle of power in the House…[Pols emphasis]

…choosing Jordan to end the impasse would also represent a huge risk for the GOP. His close alliance with Trump, who has endorsed the Ohio Republican for the top job, could alienate moderate voters in districts that paved the way to the party’s narrow majority in last year’s midterms. His record of full bore confrontation could exacerbate a showdown with the Democratic Senate and the White House over spending that could shut down the government by the middle of November and cause a backlash against Republicans.

And there is the final rub. If Republicans put Jordan in charge of the House of Representatives, their odds of holding onto majority control in the lower chamber drop significantly. The 2024 television ads write themselves. Democrats will have a very clear message for the rest of the country — which has long tired of election conspiracy theories and pointless infighting — about the dangers of putting Republicans in control of anything in 2024.

It speaks volumes that Republicans in swing districts across the country have been publicly voicing their concerns that a Jordan speakership could make it very difficult for them to win re-election a year from now. As Molly Jong-Fast writes for Vanity Fair in a story titled, “The GOP is Burning Down the House”:

Could voting for right-wing bomb-thrower like Jordan scare off potential GOP voters in swing districts and risk the House in 2024? It’s hard to see a Jordan Speakership not leading to more Fox-friendly stunts and impeachment hearings. And my guess is Republicans would be better off politically in 2024 by not getting what they want here. But then again, pyromaniacs like to watch the world burn.

We’re about to find out if House Republicans are willing to light that fire.