This isn’t going to be a long column, but it is one that I felt compelled to write the moment I read the news about Steve Scalise earlier today.
WASHINGTON—House Republicans narrowly picked Rep. Steve Scalise as their nominee for speaker only to have a new band of GOP holdouts emerge, putting the party’s divisions back on display as it moved toward another unpredictable leadership fight.
In a secret ballot Wednesday, Republicans voted 113-99 to select Scalise of Louisiana, the House majority leader, over Jordan, a fiery Ohio conservative who chairs the Judiciary Committee and is backed by former President Donald Trump.
I really do like Jim Jordan. More than any other Republican in the House, Jordan hasn’t let the small GOP majority be an excuse for not going after corrupt Democrats. True, he’s limited in what he can accomplish because of the almost non-majority majority, but he’s keeping people front and center who the Democrats would prefer to be under the news radar.
Because Republicans can never do anything the simple way — that’s an observation, not a complaint — there are just enough Jordan supporters to turn this vote into Kevn McCarthy 2.0.
Actually, this is weirder than last January’s McCarthy vote was. The lines were clear in that tussle: the Freedom Caucus against the rest of the House Republicans. This one is a bit murky.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), the chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus, said it’s “sort of hard to categorize some of these holdouts,” adding, “Honestly, I did not realize that some of these people were upset.”
I’m writing this on Wednesday evening, because I wanted to see how things played out today. Well, I need not have waited; no clarity was provided. In the last half hour alone, I’ve careened from one conflicting report to another. As far as I can tell, House Republicans are as confused about what’s going on as the rest of us are.
Axios reports that “Both Jordan and McCarthy are supporting Scalise.” That seems unambiguous.
This is from a late update in the New York Times:
But Mr. Jordan qualified his support for Mr. Scalise, suggesting that he would back the Louisianian only if he won a near-unanimous vote of Republicans — far higher than the simple majority currently required under the party rules. Mr. Jordan’s allies tried to change these rules and raise the threshold, which would make it more difficult for Mr. Scalise to prevail. But the conference voted 135-88 on Wednesday morning to kill the rule change.
“Near-unanimous” isn’t as clear cut. What does that mean? One holdout? Three? All but one of the people holding out for Jordan? Oddly, the fact that Jordan seems more open-minded about getting past the current turmoil than those backing him is a sign that he would probably make a good speaker.
If you’re looking for more unexpected ingredients in this political stew, you won’t be disappointed. Despite the concerns of some that Scalise is too similar to McCarthy when it comes to policy vision, the two men weren’t exactly the best of friends. Now, some centrist McCarthy supporters are falling in behind the very conservative Jordan. It’s beginning to take on the feel of a toddler daycare where all of the little ones are up well past their nap times.
Here’s where Matt Gaetz — the fly in the ointment who got all of this started — is on the matter as of Wednesday afternoon:
I voted for Jordan.
Now Jordan is for Scalise.
Both are an upgrade over McCarthy. pic.twitter.com/1rA0qHMYRA
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) October 11, 2023
What will be really interesting is seeing how well Scalise can help his own cause; he was the Republican whip for almost nine years, after all. No one in this bag of cats Republican caucus has more experience corralling votes than he does. Does he have enough magic in him to whip votes for himself?
I’ll wrap up with what prompted the headline to pop in my head this morning. Politics aside, Steve Scalise has literally taken a bullet for the GOP. Why he came back to work after that, I’ll never know. He did though. None of the Republicans in the House are my ideal candidate for the speaker gig because I don’t worship politicians or expect them to be completely in sync with my political ideals. I’ve publicly stated that I would be all right with either Jordan or Scalise as speaker.
Scalise has earned his way up the leadership ladder. While I am always grateful that the Republicans aren’t a hive mind collective, I also think that it’s counterproductive to have a cult of personality diaper-filling each time something important needs to be voted on.
The line between principled political opposition and tedious tantrum is getting ever thinner. Let’s hope that the GOP isn’t intent on erasing it altogether.
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