Jim Jordan, an ally of Donald Trump, was singled out by the parliamentary commission investigating the attack on the Capitol for his role in trying to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. A prominent member of the radical wing of the Republican Party lost. This Tuesday, the first vote for President of the House of Representatives will take place. However, Jordan is close to achieving the majority needed to succeed the ousted Kevin McCarthy. The House of Representatives must continue voting until Jordan or another candidate achieves a majority. The incumbent president has called a recess and it is not yet known when the second vote will take place. Meanwhile, the chamber’s operations are paralyzed.
The Trump nominee has reached 200 votes, putting him 17 away from the election as there are currently two open seats and the House of Representatives has 433 congressmen. The common denominator of the twenty Republicans who did not support him is that they were elected in districts where Biden won the 2020 election. If they are perceived as extremists, they risk losing their position in the elections on November 5, 2024. At the same time as the election of the President, the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate will be renewed.
Jim Jordan, 59, is a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, the hardline wing of the Republican Party. He was the first president of this group between 2015 and 2017 and its vice president since then. Since this year he has been chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He is an ultraconservative who systematically opposes public spending, who defends a federal abortion ban across the country and refuses to recognize Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
His promotion represents a triumph of the blackmail to which hardliners have subjected the Republican Party. A handful of extremists overthrew Kevin McCarthy. Then, in an internal vote, the group preferred Steve Scalise, a right-wing but less radical option. That should have cleared the way for him to take the position. However, he threw in the towel when he saw that he would not receive the vote of the most radical members of his party in the plenary session. Ultimately, Jim Jordan won the nomination in another internal vote.
Although it is customary for the president of the House of Representatives to be elected on the first vote, McCarthy needed 15 ballots in January before realizing his dream of winning the gavel. It was the pressure from Trump who lifted the blockade on his election in a dramatic night meeting. The Republicans’ idea was not to repeat this spectacle by first looking for a candidate who would build consensus within the group. An internal vote showed that Jordan did not have this support, but the candidate and his supporters managed to convince (with arguments and pressure) a large part of the moderates and he preferred to be defeated in the plenary session first that the Resistance fighters and opponents of his choice are represented and identified.
The Republican candidate’s nomination was presented by New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who used her speech to criticize Joe Biden and portray the apocalyptic vision of the United States that Trumpists represent. He portrayed Jordan as a “patriot and America’s first warrior” and referenced his past as a sports fighter.
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The Democrats, for their part, nominated their leader in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, who received the most votes from his group in this first round with 212 votes, but had no chance of reaching the required majority. “We are here because the house has fallen into chaos. “We are here because this holy house has been brought to a breaking point by two dangerous forces, extremism and partisanship,” Democrat Pete Aguilar said on the floor before issuing a scathing criticism of Jordan.
“A vote today to appoint the architect of abortion bans across the country, election denier and supporter of the insurrection, as president of this House would send a terrible message to the country and our allies,” Aguilar said. “We are talking about someone who has spent his entire career endangering our national security, who has attempted one government shutdown after another, has wasted taxpayer dollars on baseless investigations that end in dead ends, and has written the very bill that would… would ban abortion across the country without exception” and incitement to violence in this House. Even leaders of his own party have called him a “legislative terrorist,” he added.
Jordan is arousing suspicion within his party because of his ultra-conservative profile, but also because of his refusal to recognize Biden’s election victory. “Jim Jordan participated in Trump’s conspiracy to steal the election and seize power; called on Pence to refuse to count legal votes. If Republicans elect Jordan speaker of the House of Representatives, they would abandon the Constitution. They will lose the House majority and they will deserve it,” tweeted last week former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a leader on the parliamentary commission that investigated the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The one who decisively supports him is the former president. “Jim Jordan will be a great speaker,” Trump said this Tuesday in front of the Manhattan courthouse where he is accused of corporate fraud. “I think he will have the votes soon, if not today, in a day or two,” he added.
“Jim Jordan is an insurgent who has no place as a runner-up in the presidency. I have seen the deadly attack on our democracy with my own eyes, so I am absolutely outraged that extremist Republicans could elect an insurrectionist and election denier as their leader, someone who knew in advance about January 6th and failed to do so. There is nothing to prevent it,” former police officer Michael Fanone, one of those injured in the attack on the Capitol, said in a statement.
The election of a radical as Republican House leader would increase the risk of a political stalemate in the divided US Congress. The Senate has a Democratic majority of 51 to 49. The House of Representatives, where there are two defeats, is dominated by Republicans (221 to 212). In both cases, a majority is required to pass any law, including budget laws. At two crucial moments, McCarthy chose to strike a deal with the Democrats. First, to suspend the debt ceiling and prevent the government from defaulting on its financial obligations. This brought him an uprising from the radicals in his party. A temporary budget extension should then be approved, which would prevent a partial closure of the administration. That cost him his job. For the first time, a president of the House of Representatives was removed because of a censure motion also filed by a congressman from the hard wing of his own party, Matt Gaetz.
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