What was Jordan trying to say with this anecdote? That his campaign wasn’t getting off the ground? That it would take him 66 years to win the speakership?
If there was any aviation metaphor to be drawn from the news conference, it was that his bombing run would continue — he said he saw nothing wrong with “multiple rounds of votes” — until he had blown up whatever vestiges of functionality were left in the House Republican caucus. Mercifully, his fellow Republicans shot Jordan down about six hours later.
After another failed speaker vote on the floor Friday morning — this time, Jordan lost 25 Republicans, three more than in the previous vote — the GOP caucus went to a closed-door conference room and pushed him to drop out. In a secret ballot, only 86 Republicans said he should stay in the speaker race, while 112 wanted him out. Nineteen didn’t even bother to attend; some had flown home for the weekend rather than participate in additional pointless speaker votes on the floor.
Now, the leaderless and rudderless Republicans will start all over again. The earliest they could vote on the next nominee, their third, would be Tuesday, a full three weeks since they ousted Kevin McCarthy and shut down the House of Representatives. And it’ll be a neat trick to get it done by Tuesday, with eight announced candidates (so far) in the running.
“Back to the drawing board,” a grim McCarthy said after Friday afternoon’s conference meeting. McCarthy (Calif.) blamed the seemingly endless chaos on the Republicans who ousted him, saying “the amount of damage they have done to this party and to this country is insurmountable.”
Added the former speaker: “We are in a very bad position as a party.”
How bad? Well, on the social media platform X on Thursday night, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) got into a spat with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) over her vote for McCarthy’s ouster. He then blocked her. Responded the congresswoman: “This is exactly what’s wrong with this place — too many men here with no balls.”
But it wasn’t just Matt Gaetz’s “crazy eight,” as McCarthy calls them. Jordan, a far-right pugilist, made the divisions much deeper, first by kneecapping Republicans’ first nominee to succeed McCarthy, Steve Scalise (La.), and then by launching an intimidation campaign against opponents that led to death threats against fellow Republicans and their families.
At Thursday’s caucus meeting, Gaetz (Fla.) and Rep. Mike Bost (Ill.) reportedly came close to blows. The temporary speaker, Patrick McHenry (N.C.) reportedly threatened to resign. One Jordan opponent, Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.), reported that he was being evicted from his office in Windsor, Colo., because the landlord was mad at his vote against Jordan.
Leaving an unproductive session with holdouts Thursday, Jordan held a handwritten note with a question he had apparently asked his detractors. Captured by Reuters photographer Leah Mills, it said: “What is the real reason?” (Answer: You’re a legislative terrorist.)
Incredibly, Rep. Scott Perry (Pa.), a Jordan ally, belittled the death threats. “All of us in Congress receive death threats,” he told reporters at Jordan’s Friday morning news conference. “That’s nothing new. That is another red herring.”
Perry, when he wasn’t excusing death threats against colleagues, was also preparing a resolution “removing the Honorable Patrick McHenry … from the position of elected speaker pro tempore.” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) was holding a copy of the resolution (which would inject still more chaos into the House, if that is even possible), on the House floor Friday, as captured by Associated Press photographer Alex Brandon.
McCarthy gave the nominating speech for Jordan on Friday, announcing that the always intransigent Jordan (who has enacted no bills in Congress) “is an effective legislator” and is good at “reaching compromise.”
Democrats guffawed. Republicans called for order.
After the failed vote, the “crazy eight” released a letter in which they offered colleagues that, if they elected Jordan as speaker, “We are prepared to accept censure, suspension, or removal from the conference” for leading the coup against McCarthy. (One of the signatories, Buck, promptly disavowed the letter bearing his name, reducing the band to the less-alliterative “crazy seven.”)
“If what these holdouts need is a pound of our flesh, we’re willing to give it to them,” Gaetz said.
But nobody wanted his flesh.
“I will not vote for Jim Jordan,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) told reporters on the House steps. “It used to be that I was voting for McCarthy. Now, I’m not voting for Jim Jordan.”
And Jordan supporters were throwing in the towel. “There’s no more runway,” said Pat Fallon (Tex.). Troy Nehls (Tex.) said he would vote for former president Donald Trump on the next speaker ballot.
Republicans went to the Capitol basement for another gripe session. Once again, cartloads of pizza went in. An hour later, Jordan had been dethroned.
They won’t hold the next candidate forum until Monday — what’s the rush? — because “I think we need to give people a little bit of time to mourn,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) told us in the hallway.
Gaetz left the meeting ready to cause more trouble. “The most popular Republican in the United States Congress was just knifed by a secret ballot, in a private meeting, in the basement of the Capitol,” he fumed.
For the third time in as many weeks, a Republican leader had gone down in flames.
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