For decades, the election of the Speaker of the House of Representatives was a formality, almost a procedure. The majority group met, voted among their candidates, and sided with the favorite. The radical wing of the Republican Party broke with that tradition in January with the election of Kevin McCarthy, continued to respect it last week by not accepting Steve Scalise’s internal victory, and is now drinking its own medicine. Moderate Republicans have withstood what several party congressmen called a “coup” and rejected extremist candidate Jim Jordan, former President Donald Trump’s favorite, for a second time.
A state wrestling champion in his native Ohio, Jordan compiled an impressive record of 156 wins and one loss during his high school years. As a candidate for chairman of the House of Representatives, he has already suffered two setbacks. In the second vote, he again missed the 217 votes he needed to be elected speaker. While he had received 200 supports from his group on Tuesday, he received one less support this Wednesday. A total of 22 congressmen from his party have turned their backs on him. In the vote, Democrat Hakeem Jeffries surpassed him with 212 votes, which were entirely his, but without the possibility of achieving the required majority.
To overcome the deadlock, Democrats have proposed giving limited powers to the interim president of the House of Representatives, Patrick McHenry, who took the gavel after McCarthy’s departure and his appointment, an initiative that will be voted on, albeit for now, this Wednesday could A break has been declared. The idea is that the chamber can function again even if it does not have a permanent president. This could avoid the partial closure of the administration when the budget extension approved a few weeks ago expires in less than a month. It could also handle an aid package for Ukraine and Israel, which Joe Biden plans to request as soon as it becomes viable.
Jordan, 59, faces rejection from moderate party colleagues who oppose his election for various reasons. Some represent districts with a centrist electorate where Biden won the 2020 election and believe the election of a Trump-aligned election denier could take its toll. Another group, part of the Budget Commission, sees Jordan as a radical enemy of public spending, even when it comes to dealing with emergencies and natural disasters. Some simply refuse to vote for a congressman chosen by the commission that investigated the attack on the Capitol for his role on January 6, 2021. Jordan supported Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Moderates have been pressured by the radical wing and conservative media to bow to the Trump nominee, who has never signed a bill in Congress in his more than 16 years as a lawmaker. He was more of an agent of chaos than a consensus seeker. A former Republican speaker of the House, John Boener, called him a “legislative terrorist.”
In fact, Jordan received less support from his party than McCarthy needed to remain in office. Some members of Congress propose that the motion of censure or dismissal, the so-called motion to vacate office, be reformed and replaced by a constructive motion of censure, so that this situation of chaos that entails the dismissal of a speaker without there being any for it Majority gives elect a replacement.
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The conservative newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” criticized this attitude in an op-ed that probably made Matt Gaetz, the congressman who introduced the censure motion, ring in his ears: “What kind of idiot mutineer takes over a warship, throws the captain overboard and “spends two weeks tugging haphazardly on the ropes in the hope that the ship will reach shore before supplies run out?” he said in his editorial on Wednesday.
Governance is made even more complicated because the Senate has a Democratic majority of 51 to 49, while the House of Representatives, where there are two defeats, is dominated by Republicans (221 to 212). Passing any law, even a budget bill, requires a majority in both chambers, forcing negotiations, concessions, and compromises, the exact opposite of Jim Jordan’s record, who prefers to fight, as he did when I was a student.
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