In that first encounter, I found Jordan intelligent, ideological and tenacious — one might even say pugnacious — in defending his ideas. But I came away thinking he shared a weakness common to all the tea party types I’d spoken with: He was much better at articulating what he was against than what he was for.
Over time, this tendency has only grown, and it’s become an enormous headache for American politics. This week, it also proved to be a big problem for Jim Jordan, who has struggled to muster enough votes to become speaker of the House.
It’s ridiculous that Republicans cannot elect a speaker, but it is also, at this point, unsurprising. A gaping void exists at the center of the populist strain of Republican politics; where the ideas ought to be, you too often find a long, primal scream of, “Noooooooo!!!!” It’s hard even to name many meaningful policies Republican voters want. When I asked a political analyst to name one, she said immigration. “They want the border controlled.”
And what else? “Gas prices,” she added. “More development of fossil fuels.”
And after that? She smiled, then shrugged apologetically.
I’m sure my Republican readers would add other things they care about: the left-wing capture of schools and education policy, the progressive drift of corporations and the mainstream media, the DEI bureaucracies metastasizing across every class of institutions, the gender-medicine doctors rushing kids onto puberty blockers and hormones. Out-of-control government spending, some among my readers murmur, much of it on foreign wars.
But notice how few of the things on the list are things Congress can actually fix, even theoretically. Yes, controlling the border and expanding fossil-fuel permitting would be feasible — and popular. But beyond that, we quickly get into trouble.
The government has little control over corporate policy and none at all over what media prints or broadcasts, and this is as it should be. The government does control what’s taught in public schools and how doctors may practice — but mostly at the state and local levels. And while the budget and defense policy are federal prerogatives, they’re not ones that Republicans want to exercise.
As the situation in Israel has demonstrated, the GOP caucus isn’t really united against foreign meddling. Nor is it united against government spending, at least not in the sense of wanting to do anything serious about it. Too much of the money we spend now goes to core Republican constituencies, such as veterans and seniors.
So Republicans retreat to the void: a shutdown here, a debt ceiling showdown there. After a brief span of showy symbolic fireworks, it’s back to business as usual. Which is to say, getting yourself on television to complain about Democrats.
Jordan is the perfect example of this tendency. As a founder of the House Freedom Caucus, he is powerful enough to have been dubbed “the other speaker of the House.” He’s been on Fox News more than any other sitting member of Congress but has never gotten a single bill passed into law with himself as the primary sponsor. What he’s good at is obstructing — and maneuvering against more moderate members of his caucus. This is not, it turns out, a good way to build a working majority.
The fact that Democrats have a long list of things they want to accomplish doesn’t just give them a nice hobby to occupy their time in Congress; it holds their coalition together. To do stuff, they need their majority, which is why even their radicals generally prove willing to settle for half a loaf. So Democratic legislators have relationships built on getting things done. Republican legislators increasingly have relationships built on denouncing each other as RINOs or “legislative terrorists.”
This is the dynamic that saw Rep. Matt Gaetz and seven other Republicans banding with Democrats to depose a Republican House speaker. It’s the dynamic that makes it difficult for them to agree on Jordan or anyone else. And until Republicans find something to fill the void, this sucking black hole will consume more and more of their politics, collapsing their party inward on itself — and ironically empowering Democrats.
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