Connexion
Florida gets all the attention. The GOP power center of the future is closer to D.C.
The Ohio River tears westward through the Pittsburgh suburbs, whisks into West Virginia, cuts on through Ohio, capstones Kentucky, indexes Indiana, and terminates in Southern Illinois. In the end, it marries the mighty Mississippi. The Ohio River once marked the frontier—a land of second chances and poseur aristocrats.
Now they just call it Trump country.
By twofold, Louisville, Kentucky, is the most populous city on the river. Bourbon country’s finest is followed by Pittsburgh, and then ever so closely by Cincinnati. Hunter S. Thompson, a native, declared Louisville “a Southern city, with Northern problems.” A Cincinnatian in the know told me his hometown is the inverse.
You see it when you’re there. Moving east and south across Ohio, Cincinnati is no Toledo. There is no quick-and-easy explanation of a glass industry gone away, no Detroit-style misery in miniature. Cincinnati is not comparable to Cleveland-Akron, Ohio’s Dallas-Fort Worth. Cincy has never suffered such a collapse in prestige. One hundred years ago, Cleveland was the fifth largest city in the United States—more fearsome than American-ancient Boston or nouveau Los Angeles.
Cincinnati is also not Columbus. First, Cincinnati is more likely to keep its name. (Roman generals are grandfathered in; explorers of the last six hundred years are not.) Second, unlike Columbus, Cincinnati is not anchored to a benign cult: the Ohio State University.
John Jeremiah Sullivan wrote that Ohio “has its very blandness and averageness, faintly comical, to cling to.” But these places are not so satirical. After all, there are hipster bars that could have been ripped from Hollywood (or anywhere these days). And there are early 20th-century homes (though often on German-named streets) refurbished by under-40s that could double as S.F. Victorians in a pinch.
More than anywhere else in the state, Ohio’s capital Columbus (and its more transient population) often seems intent on breaking its Midwest mold in such a fashion. Though such maneuvers all feel very self-aware—which is perhaps even more Midwestern.
Columbus is the fastest-growing city of significance in the state, though such materialist markers of success haven’t stopped many Ohioans from spouting complaints that could be heard in Northern Virginia, the Atlanta suburbs, and scores of towns across Texas, Florida, and anywhere in 21st century America that’s actually growing.
Last, and not least, and barely in the state, is Cincinnati and the overlooked Ohio River.
It still bears emphasizing: Eight presidents of the United States have hailed from Ohio. And seven were born in the state—including the seven that occupied the Oval Office from Reconstruction to the Roaring Twenties. Seven in half a century.
In contrast to the general understanding of American oligarchy, Ohio has been more important on the level of presidents than Harvard. Ohio politics in the Gilded Age was plausibly more important than the Democratic Party’s. And Ohio backrooms were nearly interchangeable with the GOP’s.
The last representative of this Ohio old guard was Senator Robert Taft, who in the early 1950s substituted “sane analysis for expediency” (his words), argued China not Russia was enemy number one, and exhorted Europe to be vaguely self-reliant.
Taft was defeated in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952 by the most plausible heir to George Washington to date: Dwight Eisenhower. Taft’s ideas seemed, for a lifetime, to be settled business, as defeated as the druids.
Robert Taft’s father had been president of the United States and chief justice of the Supreme Court. Kids from even Southern Appalachia (a land of confusion and confused loyalty), like this writer’s grandfather, were named for the old man. For more than seventy years, to use a 21st century phrase, Robert Taft has been treated like the geopolitical version of a failson.
Even his father William Howard Taft, that stout figure who served between Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, was seemingly abandoned by history.
Yet along the Ohio River, up a road in Cincinnati named for the 27th president, there is a man some now think will be the 48th, and possibly the youngest ever.
In 10 years, Ohio has swapped places with Virginia on the political map. Now it is Ohio that is a soft red state a stone’s throw from Washington.
Sure, Akron is not Arlington-close, but there are portions of Virginia that are further west of Detroit. It’s not Arizona or Wyoming. And Ohio has the arsenal of would-be commanders-in-chief to match this new prestige that comes with being important, safe for the GOP, and an hour flight from power.
Before this shift, but after Taft, Ohio had a generation of usually Democratic grandees that seems strange and supine now.
There was Democratic Senator John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth and not the last to run a weird and blighted campaign for president. There was Republican Governor and before that Congressman John Kasich, reportedly brilliant and temperamental, but brilliant and temperamental about balanced budgets (fair) and Ukraine aid (much less so). It was a different time; it was certainly a different GOP.
There was Speaker John Boehner, beloved by the Washington press corps and the maître d’ at the Met Club. His tenure now is set to be lost in the noise of the Newt Gingrich revolution, the Dennis Hastert catastrophe, the Nancy Pelosi stints, the Paul Ryan story, and what could still be the GOP’s Year of Five Speakers.
There were more. Ted Strickland, Democratic governor in the Noughties and an ordained minister, was on Barack Obama’s vice-presidential search list when the Democratic Party felt the need to strike a middle ground in the culture war.
Notably absent from the Ohio national profile in these pre-Trump years was anything in the way of an effective punch on the issue of deindustrialization. It all went down, after all.
At the commanding heights, it was a process. As Charles Bukowski wrote in 1986: “Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are [laid] off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: ‘I put in 35 years…’ ‘It ain’t right…’ ‘I don’t know what to do…’”
Especially after the collapse of communism, most statewide Republicans were tacitly for international laissez-faire. Both Democratic Senators at the time (including Glenn) and 11 of 19 congressmen voted against the North American Free Trade Agreement’s ignoble ratification. Among the Republicans voting in favor were Kasich and Rob Portman, the latter a Bushie U.S. Trade Representative and later U.S. senator.
In the meantime, many Democrats were content to rally support on these issues at the polls while often eliding immigration. They, too, seemingly achieved little.
By the late 1990s, dissent on these subjects was marginalized to such voices as James Traficant (the “oracle from Youngstown” to some, a convicted racketeer to others) and Dennis Kucinich (more on him a little later). In Britain, these figures would have been written off as “the loony left.”
This line of thought is certain to resurface this year as Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown seeks another term in office. He’s considered a state great, having been in elected office since the Seventies.
To his most cynical Republican critics, who have possibly been feeding lines to his opponent Bernie Moreno, Sherrod Brown is great like Elizabeth II was great. Like the late monarch, Brown is impossibly long in tenure and has been an overseer of precipitous decline.
For now, the old statewide consensus—what MAGA populists would now call “the uniparty”—is preserved in amber in the form of current Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. Presently, he is probably best described as an anti-anti-Trump Republican. Like the current president, DeWine’s been running for office since the ’70s. This is his last gig.
For the establishment, at least: après moi, le déluge.
West of Columbus and Northeast of Dayton, there is Jim Jordan, the congressman who in many ways was first on board with the new tendency. An unremitting presence on cable news, in office since 2001, Jordan’s tradecraft has left him open to the critique that he is agnostic on governing.
In recent years, Jordan has sought—or been compelled by circumstance—to correct this impression.
The current chair of the influential House Judiciary Committee, Jordan attempted a bid for speaker in the mad scrum last autumn. If Speaker Mike Johnson’s tenure collapses before the November general election, Jordan may well be the odds-on favorite to succeed him.
Southwest in the Eighth District is below-the-radar player Warren Davidson. A West Pointer and former Army Ranger, the congressman’s “your word is your bond” personal style may be better suited for whatever comes after the Trump restoration—or the attempt at it that may soon end.
It is not unimaginable that Davidson could wind up a senior national security official under a President Trump next year. The former president has gone out of his way to show he means business this time, to the delight of both the right and the liberal press who have papers to sell.
On foreign policy, especially, the ex-president is short on allies and frankly running out of neocons he hasn’t fired. If a Senate vacancy opens up next year, Davidson could run for the upper chamber (he looked but passed on a run this year).
In the meantime, Davidson could take down a speaker of the House. Like a realist Georges Danton, no single member of Congress has communicated so proudly the imperative to end the old ways. That starts with bringing the war in the east to a close, or at least American sponsorship of it.
Dashing back to Columbus now is Cincy native and overnight Republican rock star Vivek Ramaswamy. The entrepreneur-turned-politician relocated back to Ohio in recent years. His wife is a physician at OSU. Ramaswamy passed on the 2022 Senate race only to dive headfirst into the 2024 presidential contest.
Ramaswamy has been compared derisively to Pete Buttigieg, another millennial Ivy League “gunner.” Past the mistiest similarities, it is an inaccurate comparison.
Buttigieg’s support was often bolstered by voters older than him. Ramaswamy, by contrast, seemed to rattle many establishment Baby Boomer conservative sensibilities while he built a youth fanbase online.
Buttigieg is taciturn. Ramaswamy is saber-rattling. Buttigieg is the bête noire of the Bernie Sanders wing. Ramaswamy is all in on Trump and Trumpism.
The Senate nominee this year, Moreno, is perhaps the biggest unknown.
A Hispanic-American and a career car dealer, Moreno’s background is plainly that of the kind of striver his party both seeks to attract and increasingly has come to represent. In his primary night victory speech, Moreno castigated the U.S. trade deficit with China.
Moreno has the staunch backing of much of the most populist and nationalist infrastructure in Washington, DC. But he does not have much in the way of an independent brand—it is one he will swiftly have to develop.
After all, a five-alarm fire, with way more than a whiff of the political dark arts, erupted at the eleventh hour in Moreno’s primary race. A 16-year-old alleged gay dating profile on an adult website. Was it Moreno’s?
“I reviewed all the available information and it showed that the account had only a single visit, no activity, no profile photo, consistent with a prank or someone just checking out the site. That’s it,” said AdultFriendFinder founder Andrew Cornu, denouncing the story. “It’s important to recognize that even temporary access to an email account is sufficient to create a fake dating profile in someone else’s name.”
For a party and a country seemingly debating abortion and gay rights this year with a fury not seen in decades, the impression of hypocrisy or even pathology could mean Senate control.
Even if one concedes the Republican talking point that Sherrod Brown is not all that he seems, the fact remains he has seemed just fine to voters. They have only once rejected him, in an Ohio secretary of state’s race over thirty years ago.
Coincidentally, Moreno is also the new father-in-law of Republican Congressman Max Miller. Both are from the Cleveland area. Miller, a 35-year-old freshman representative, is a Trump White House alum, a stalwart ally of Mar-A-Lago, but not generally associated with the party’s reformist wing.
Indeed, during the battle over Kevin McCarthy’s speakership, Miller broke with Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, the anti-McCarthy ringleader, in furious terms. His critics see him as a grandiose foreign policy hawk. He said shortly after the October 7 Hamas atrocity that Israel should be bound by “no rules of engagement.”
Miller is running for reelection this year—against Kucinich (!), last seen running Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Kucinich left the RFK team in mid-October, as the candidate left the Democratic race to run as an independent.
Some near the Kennedy orbit have commented privately that Kucinich’s exodus lines up with RFK’s foreign policy post–October 7. Remarkably, on the Gaza war, Kennedy is arguably now the most hawkish of the three leading presidential candidates.
As Trump has urged Jerusalem to “finish up” and Biden has increasingly ceded ground to his progressive left, Kennedy has overtly rejected ceasefires and truces. This has won him plaudits from such arch-hawks as the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
“I don’t even know what that means right now,” Kennedy said in March of a potential stoppage in fighting. Each such cessation “has been used by Hamas to rearm, to rebuild and then launch another surprise attack. So what would be different this time?”
Surely these issues will soon come up on the campaign trail between Miller and Kucinich.
All these tensions, open disagreements and questions of authenticity and how they are settled—or not—will determine how much the Republican Party has really, truly changed.
No discussion of Ohio, of the Republican Party, or American politics is complete any longer without addressing Senator J.D. Vance.
For the subject at hand, he’s the 800-pound gorilla. Except what a poor analogy that is: the senator looks to be down about thirty pounds. The question of the hour is if he is, indeed, “central casting” to be Donald Trump’s second running mate.
At first, Vance might not make all that intuitive sense for the role. Shouldn’t Trump select a woman or a minority?
That is easier said than done, actually, as President Joe Biden found out in 2020. First Biden committed himself to the selection of a woman—it was a killing stroke to win the primary against Bernie Sanders in the waning normal days of 2020 (mid-March). By summer, the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd compelled Biden to select an African-American, ruling out white Minnesota politicians and former prosecutors such as Amy Klobuchar.
Trump has shrewdly not hemmed himself in so tightly, but another Biden-style precedent looms. Major party presidential nominees usually don’t select non-politicians or even backbench congressmen for a reason. Statewide politicians—elected senators and governors—are more heavily vetted, and are demonstrated survivors. Yet even selecting a governor of a less populous frontier state is fraught with risk, as John McCain learned with Sarah Palin.
Under this rubric, and ruling out clear apostates such as former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, the list is winnowed considerably: Vance; South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem; Florida Senator Marco Rubio; North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
With Rubio, the main problem is logistical. Both he and Trump are residents of the same state. Would Trump move his legal residence? Amidst a sprawling dragnet of criminal indictments related to his business and political practices? Would Rubio resign his Senate seat and move to another state for a race he might well lose?
Noem is bedeviled by a whisper campaign about marital infidelity. More significantly, Noem is in a double bind politically on social issues, cutting into her appeal as a feminine complement to Trump.
On the one hand, social conservatives view Noem as not hardline on the transsexual issue. In 2021, Noem declined to sign a transgender sports ban in college athletics, purposefully avoiding a fight with the NCAA. She cited her small state’s tourism concerns and her duty to her constituents. Conservatives such as Tucker Carlson disagreed, and the matter culminated in a Fox News showdown.
On the other hand, Noem signed into law an abortion ban that wiped away exceptions for rape and incest.
Noem gave a striking, inspired answer to Carlson a year later on the subject of Ukraine:
The primary external threat to the United States in Communist China. Our opposition to Russia has heightened this threat… The American people didn’t get us into this war. Joe Biden did. Biden has this fantasy that he can do the same kind of thing to Russia that Ronald Reagan did to the Soviet Union. … We’ve already overextended ourselves in our largesse to Ukraine.
But it’s likely, though not certain, that she’s staked out ground that has bled too many would-be allies.
Burgum is a dark horse in Vance’s way. It’s difficult to see what Burgum—Midwestern, tall, business experience, brains—brings that Vance doesn’t also while legitimately exciting people. Trump is said to fear anointing a successor. But picking the little-known if probably safe Burgum risks jumping the shark. Trump once also thought highly of Rex Tillerson.
The other question for Vance: Should he want the number 2 slot?
It is not a secret The American Conservative is a longtime confederate of the junior senator from Ohio. The upside is clear: No politician in America is as staked out as clearly on the stalwart issues of foreign policy realism, trade realism, and immigration restriction. No one. If Vance becomes vice president, he will be the runaway favorite to succeed a reelected Trump.
There is also the potential extraordinary circumstance that Trump wins but is forced from office by legal or financial issues or poor health (with a presumably corresponding set of pardons solving some of these issues). Vance, who turns forty in August, would become the youngest president in American history.
Yet, if Trump loses, or if he loses badly, not only does Trump go down but the most credible populist in the country is badly tarnished by a rout. Only one losing vice presidential nominee in over a century has later become president: Franklin Roosevelt. And it took FDR 12 years and the crisis of the Great Depression to recover politically from his loss on the 1920 ticket.
For Vance, then, this is a vabanque political moment less than two years into his Senate career.
It is especially so attached to a personality like Trump’s. The former president is the consummate gambler. Untold numbers of individuals have flamed out of his orbit.
Is this the move?
The personal fealty between Vance and the Trumps seems genuine. Vance is clearly tight with Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. Few have been able to strike the delicate balance between Trump’s personal affairs and Trump’s political prerogatives. Has Vance found it? It would be a major asset in office.
Much has been made of Vance’s highly bespoke political call in 2016: enthused and sympathetic about the issues Trump was raising, opposed to his becoming president.
Five years later, in autumn 2021, Vance (before he was a senator) told me Donald Trump would be reelected and inaugurated in January 2025. Back then, I ferociously disagreed. A major horseshoe political miss that Vance has recovered from could soon be capstoned by powerful prescience very few had.
It could make Vance the second most powerful person in the country.
Back when I started in journalism, I worked with the longtime columnist Michael Barone. In vivid contrast with most others I met, those who warned what a tough business media was, Barone reported the industry’s upsides. Barone had predicted Mitt Romney would win 315 electoral votes in the previous election with nary a professional consequence.
But Barone is hardly out to lunch, even if he joined organized conservatism’s strange sanguinity about the electoral appeal of Mitt Romney. He quickly followed up.
In his 2013 work Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics, Barone put forward the case (which would have huge relevance in 2016) that the Midwest is the most dovish region of the United States. The Midwest was notably settled by immigrants fleeing the wars of Europe. The Germans and even the Irish-Americans in the region were less likely to support any foreign policy perceived as too pro-British, which was increasingly a hallmark of U.S. foreign policy after the Civil War.
“Southernization” has defined U.S. demography and its politics for nearly a century and especially much of the last fifty years. Americans continued (and continue) moving south and west. Between 1976 to 2004, it became conventional wisdom that any Democratic ticket that had a prayer would have to feature a Southerner, probably at the top (Carter, Clinton).
From 1980 onwards, Republicans always featured a Southerner (and a Bush) except for 1996, an election in which the party was totally swarmed. The 1992 presidential race featured two Texas millionaires against the governor of neighboring Arkansas. The winning Democratic ticket of the 1990s was united by the Hernando de Soto Bridge in Memphis that links Tennessee and the Razorback State.
And then, all at once, the South disappeared from the big game.
In 2008, McCain-Palin vs. Obama-Biden skipped the region (unless you’re catching the current president on the occasional day he feels inclined to remind you that Delaware was a slave state). In 2012, Romney and Ryan were two Yankees. Parts of Indiana are arguably the South, but Mike Pence is not from that part.
And no Southerner is in the top tier of Trump vice presidential aspirants (Miami is not the South). Three Midwesterners (Vance, Noem, Burgum) are.
Given both the obscene housing crunch now hitting Florida and even Texas and the clear problems of the West Coast, the continued U.S. national move south and west may be no fait accompli. Much like Russia, the Midwest hopes to be a moonshot beneficiary of climate change.
Demographics could match political reality in the coming decade. For now, political reality is already here.
Midwest political influence—and Ohio Republican power, particularly—is back on the scene.
The post How Ohio Became the Center of the Republican World appeared first on The American Conservative.
It turns out that housing subsidies make the housing crisis worse.
According to a principle enunciated by Ronald Reagan, “If you want more of something, subsidize it.” Real-world examples of this phenomenon abound, from electric vehicles to solar panels, but broad generalizations inspire a search for exceptions. Is it true in all cases? And if not, what causes the results to differ?
Affordable housing is a fitting subject to test the theory, as it can be divided fairly neatly into opposing categories, public and private. A privately owned apartment building financed with funds from a privately owned institution can be as affordable to tenants as a project financed with government loans, grants, and subsidies, but the former will not typically be counted as progress towards an affordable housing goal. Why not? Because it won’t be the scene of a ribbon-cutting or ground-breaking ceremony, or provide a naming opportunity for a politician, living or dead. Does the rule that you get more of something if you subsidize it apply equally to the public and private sectors?
No, because of the countervailing principle known as “the Bureaucratic Rule of Two.”
Formulated by the late economist Thomas Borcherding, this theory concluded empirically that “removal of an activity from the private to the public sector will double its unit costs of production.”
Affordable housing provided by the public sector is, despite the label, not very affordable. As a result developers are starting, in Nancy Reagan-fashion, to just say no to public funding. In Los Angeles, where a 2016 bond issue for low-income housing raised $1.2 billion, the city of San Jose found that affordable housing units funded in part by tax credits cost an average of $939,000 per unit. The end result of this well-meaning effort? The number of people living on the streets actually grew by 60 percent. By contrast, a private fund raised by SDS Capital Group that did not use this subsidy was able to build comparable units for only $291,000 per unit.
What accounts for the difference? There are several contributing factors. One is the necessary complexity that public funding adds to the cost of such projects. Some of these factors are intrinsic to government; you don’t want to hand out credits that can be used to reduce taxpayers’ liability on a dollar-for-dollar basis without legislative safeguards to prevent abuse by the rich. On the other hand, losing tax revenue is hard-wired into subsidized housing programs; in 2023, the low-income housing tax credit cost around $13.2 billion in lost revenue according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, and that figure is expected to increase by $2 billion by 2025. As the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois said, a billion here, a billion there—pretty soon you’re talking real money.
The utility of low-income housing tax credits is limited to those with large tax liabilities and high disposable income, however, which means—the rich. Investors buy the credits at a discount—currently around 90 cents on the dollar—with the net funds flowing into the project. Before those monies are spent on land, labor and building materials, however, they must run through a gauntlet of service providers—“syndicators, general partners, managers, and investors,” in the words of a Tax Policy Center study—that is longer than a comparable private sector project would face. Each of these players—plus the usual crowd of lawyers, accountants, consultants and appraisers—takes a whack at the pork at it scurries by.
Then there are the public policy encumbrances that are added on to serve social goals that may be laudable in the abstract, but which can have unintended negative consequences. Take, for example, project labor agreements that mandate all building trades on a job be union shops. This requirement operates to exclude most minority-owned contractors; in New Jersey, for example, 98 percent of African-American and Hispanic construction companies are non-union. Some public sector competitive bidding laws have the perverse effect of raising construction costs by requiring separate sub-contractor bids, thus ruling out innovative construction methods such as so-called “design-build,” which allows private sector developers to have a single point of responsibility for an entire project.
Viewed in perspective, then, the benefits of affordable housing subsidies flow in a pattern that resembles a snow-boarder’s half-pipe: on one high side, dollar-for-dollar reductions in taxes paid by the rich; on the other, housing for the poor; that big dip in between means nothing for the middle class.
So what is to be done? Ask developers and they say their comparative advantage over the public sector would widen even further from streamlined permitting. How to protect the interests of tenants from private landlords who don’t maintain their properties? The amount of subsidies sloshing around in the low-income residential real estate market—expected to grow to $15.2 billion next year—would pay for a lot of housing inspectors.
Many years ago I was a legal tyro in a law firm that specialized in subsidized housing. A fellow associate would sometimes spend the night, burning the midnight fluorescent bulbs. When I commiserated with her and told her she should ease up for the sake of her health and well-being, she said her work was fulfilling because she was helping poor people.
I recalled for her the investor list from a recent deal I’d worked on: It included movie stars, name-brand musicians, big-time real estate investors, and other high-net-worth types. What about them? I asked. Who’s looking out for their interests?
She thought for a moment, then an expression of enlightenment slowly crept across her face: “I guess I am.”
The post A Reaganite Approach to the Housing Crisis? appeared first on The American Conservative.
CENTCOM Sunday reported the death of three American servicemen and the injury of over two dozen more in a drone attack on a U.S. base in northeastern Jordan, near the borders with Syria and Iraq. The White House, in its statement the same day, attributed the attacks to Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq.
Per the Washington Post, an official of the Islamic Resistance—an umbrella group for Shiite militant groups in Iraq and Syria—claimed that the strike was targeting American assets in Syria.
Politicians of both parties called for direct military retaliation against the Islamic Republic.
Fucking lunatics. pic.twitter.com/cI2FDp0eXF
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 28, 2024
Geoff LaMear of Defense Priorities argued in these pages that escalation in the Middle East will lead to further quagmire, and the U.S. should instead reduce its exposure in the region.
The balance of risk and reward matter. The rewards for staying are intangible, dubious, and largely imaginary. The risks for staying are bloody, costly, and catastrophic.
The post Pols Call for War After Jordan Strike Kills 3 U.S. Personnel appeared first on The American Conservative.
Rep. Tom Emmer is the favorite among eight candidates vying to be the GOP’s next nominee for Speaker of the House. But is his candidacy viable?
As the House of Representatives voted to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, The American Conservative reported based on sources close to the matter on Capitol Hill that Majority Whip Tom Emmer could be McCarthy’s replacement.
“The only person who could get the votes to become speaker would be Majority Whip Tom Emmer,” a staffer for a key Freedom Caucus member told TAC at the time. “However, it would take several days if not weeks to get a winning vote… Emmer seems like a step up, however we don’t know what kind of leader he’d be. It’s a very difficult situation.”
Emmer is now the favorite among eight declared candidates vying for the blessing of the House Republican conference. Aside from Emmer, Republican Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson, Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan, Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, and Rep. Gary Palmer of Alabama have all launched their own bids. Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania briefly declared but backed out Monday evening.
If Emmer manages to secure the nomination, which is scheduled for Tuesday morning, the morning after a candidate forum for the conference Monday night, he will be the third Republican to receive the nod since McCarthy’s ousting.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise was the first to secure the GOP nomination for speaker, but his bid floundered amidst a conservative opposition that was calling for a change in the status quo and was concerned by setting a precedent that a motion to vacate could be used to elevate climbers in leadership. It completely fell apart when Scalise failed to place pressure on conservatives by bringing the fight to the House floor.
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio was the next to get the nod from the GOP conference. Unlike Scalise, he was willing to go to the floor. Jordan, like McCarthy in January, had twenty detractors, but while McCarthy’s came from the right, Jordan’s were scattered amongst the House Appropriations Committee, foreign policy hawks, and liberal Republicans. But Jordan made a costly error in tactics by taking the fight off the floor and into a conference meeting all of Thursday. At that point, the House had only voted twice on Jordan’s bid. In the House Republican conference meeting, members considered a resolution that would have expanded Speaker Pro Tem Patrick Mchenry’s powers to conduct House business and vote on a new permanent speaker in January. But the meeting made clear that the proposed resolution was not going anywhere.
And Jordan, who initially spoke favorably about the resolution according to TAC sources, suffered for seeming to waver about his own candidacy. When Republicans returned to the House floor to vote on Jordan’s bid a third time, he received 194 votes due to five additional objectors. Shortly thereafter, the Ohio Congressman abandoned his bid for Speaker of the House.
But it’s far from a guarantee that Emmer will receive the GOP’s nomination, much less the speakership. There are some candidates among the spoilers that might have a hard time getting to 217 on the floor, but could perform very well in the GOP conference vote.
Johnson joined the race to become the next Speaker of the House on Saturday and could be a viable candidate not only in the conference meeting Monday night but also when it comes time to vote on the floor. “It is incumbent upon us now to decide upon a consensus candidate who can serve as a trusted caretaker and a good steward of the gavel,” the Louisiana Congressman wrote in a letter to his GOP colleagues.
“We all agree the urgency this hour demands a specific plan and bold, decisive action,” Johnson added. Not only is Johnson the conference vice chair but he previously chaired the Republican Study Committee, the largest group among House Republicans. With a strong, conservative voting record that simultaneously can play to the various factions in the conference and a reputation for making few enemies, Johnson might receive the nomination if it becomes clear that Emmer’s candidacy wouldn’t survive the House floor. And he could always wait in the wings and strike if Emmer’s candidacy struggles.
Donalds could be another candidate that spoils Emmer’s bid in the conference. The Florida Congressman announced his bid Friday night. “My sole focus will be securing our border, funding our government responsibly, advancing a conservative vision for the House of Representatives and the American People, and expanding our Republican majority,” Donalds said in a statement. “Under my leadership, the House will lead the charge to advance a simple objective: put the American people first, keep them safe, and make their lives easier,” Donalds later added.
Donalds was deeply involved in the Speaker’s fight in January and became the twenty McCarthy objector’s nominee for the bulk of the 15 rounds of voting. Though Donalds was a part of the twenty, he was not viewed with the same disdain as the rest of the twenty at the time, and has since made inroads with the rest of the conference by working closely with leadership and other power players in the conference. Prior to the continuing resolution that ended up passing, Donalds worked with other prominent House Republicans to draft a continuing resolution that many members of the conference liked, but met opposition from Gaetz and a few other conservatives.
Furthermore, any ill will that conference members may have had towards Donalds because of his involvement in January has for the most part been concentrated towards the members that voted for McCarthy’s removal earlier this month. The members that have endorsed Donalds up until this point are a testament to this fact. Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida, who vociferously backed McCarthy in January, has thrown her weight behind Donalds. As has Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, a Jordan objector who continued to vote for McCarthy. Rep. Mike Waltz, another Floridian, has also endorsed Donalds.
There is another interesting dynamic at play for the current crop of candidates hoping the third time’s the charm, too. As the home state of Donald’s endorsements makes obvious, there is a state and regional element to the considerations of House GOP members—something blatantly obvious and integral to our constitutional order but is often neglected or forgotten in the bean-counting politics of modern day Washington.
Some of the current candidates are from states with sizable delegations in the House GOP. Such is the case with Rep. Sessions of Texas, the state with the largest delegation in the House GOP conference. Previously, when Scalise considered making a bid for speaker, one of the Majority Leader’s first moves was meeting with Texas Republicans and asking for their support. Furthermore, Sessions, a long-time member of Congress who briefly was voted out in 2018, but regained his seat in 2020, also formerly ran the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). There’s also Bergman’s bid, which comes with the expressed support of the House GOP’s Michigan delegation, though its numbers are far fewer than the Texas delegation.
Sources on Capitol Hill tell TAC that Emmer is probably the least conservative among the candidates that have a realistic shot at becoming the next Speaker of the House. Sadly, sources suggest that might make him the best positioned to win.
There are serious concerns with Emmer’s recent voting record. Emmer voted in favor of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, McCarthy’s unpopular debt-ceiling deal with Democrats, September’s continuing resolution, Ukraine aid, and the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified the government’s recognition of gay marriage.
As TAC previously reported, support for Ukraine could be a problem for Emmer as he goes for the gavel. “Ukraine has become a very big issue in the party. Republicans are heavily moving towards not funding them anymore. But it’s important to note that it’s because of increasing pressure from the American people. The people are tired of it. Republicans in favor of Ukraine funding are looked at very unfavorably by their constituents,” the aforementioned staffer told TAC.
Others, however, are not so sure Emmer could survive on the floor because he’ll run into the same problem that McCarthy ran into in January: a bloc of conservatives that will not vote for him in any circumstances.
“If House Republicans elect Tom Emmer Speaker, we will have learned nothing from the past 7 years,” one GOP member told TAC.
The post Another Gang of Eight appeared first on The American Conservative.
What actually happened in one of the most disruptive episodes of the supposed Watergate scandal?
This weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the “Saturday Night Massacre,” a heroic but doomed attempt by President Richard M. Nixon to halt the runaway tyranny of the deep state, the judiciary, and the corporate media before it could usurp fully the government of the people of the United States of America. The episode, like the Watergate scandal as a whole, has been entirely distorted in American memory, with Nixon miscast in the very role of his opponents: a man gone mad with power, an aspiring despot with no regard for the Constitution. It was, in most tellings, the moment that doomed the Nixon presidency—after sixteen months of Americans not caring that five men had been caught snooping at the DNC headquarters, and just eleven months since the American people sent Nixon back to the White House in the most resounding electoral victory in the country’s history.
The saga began in June 1971, when the New York Times published the “Pentagon Papers,” a trove of classified documents detailing American policy and actions in the ongoing Vietnam War. The documents had been leaked by a radical activist named Daniel Ellsberg, who as a senior staffer at both the Department of Defense and the RAND Corporation had been admitted to the inner circles of trust of the American military establishment, in an effort to undermine U.S. interests abroad and political stability at home.
The Pentagon Papers, covering 1945–1968, had virtually nothing to do with the Nixon administration, and, in fact, they reflected the grave misdeeds of the president’s opponents. But Nixon had cut his teeth in Washington two decades earlier on the House Un-American Activities Committee, exposing Alger Hiss and other dangerous enemies of America embedded deep within the government and the highest levels of media. This was exactly the kind of subversion from within that he and his colleagues had feared then and hoped to stop. America could not function in the 20th century with Ellsbergs stalking the shadowy halls of a military-industrial complex at war with itself any more than it could survive the construction of a globe-spanning super-state with Alger Hiss as its architect.
A week after the publication, aides within the White House stood up a Special Investigations Unit meant to get a handle on such leaks from the executive branch. John Ehrlichman tapped Egil “Bud” Krogh to lead the project, a family friend who had worked for him prior to joining the administration. Krogh was wet behind the ears, a 31-year-old lawyer from Chicago with a reputation for decency. Political journalist Theodore White later joked that “to put Egil Krogh in charge of a secret police operation was equivalent to making Frank Merriwell chief executive of a KGB squad.” Krogh hired G. Gordon Liddy, a decorated veteran of the FBI, to help run the unit’s operations. E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA officer and prolific pulp novelist, had been hired elsewhere in the White House but was quickly moved to the “Plumbers” (a not especially clever self-reference that has stuck for half a century). The ranks were largely filled out from Hunt’s circles at the CIA, especially those who had worked on his notoriously unsuccessful operations in Cuba.
The first major effort the Plumbers undertook was a burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, during which they hoped to turn up damaging information about the leaker’s mental health. When that failed to produce a smoking gun, they planned, but were not allowed, to execute a second burglary at the psychiatrist’s home. The scheme was worse than fruitless: These men’s missteps allowed Ellsberg to escape justice for his crimes, as the burglary and other misconduct became public during trial. He did not receive a single conviction, nor did he serve a single day of the 115-year prison sentence the charges warranted.
Their incompetence became clear early on, so the Plumbers were largely shunted off to tinker with campaign schemes, rather than ostensibly more sensitive White House business, as the president entered reelection season. In May 1972, they planted two listening devices at the headquarters of the Democratic National Convention at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. What value they thought they would obtain from these bugs has never been clear, but they were apparently worth enough that a second break-in was warranted a month later to fix one of the devices.
It is this last Plumbers break-in, on June 17, 1972, that has gone down in history. Five men with varying degrees of connection to the CIA and the Nixon campaign were arrested with lockpicks, huge amounts of cash, and other cartoon burglary equipment. Hunt’s name was found in two of the men’s address books, along with the White House phone number. The scene was so colossally moronic that it almost seemed as if the burglars were trying to get caught.
In the following days, senior White House staff began to learn of the involvement of both campaign and administration personnel. Top aides, along with the president himself, discussed how to handle these revelations with minimal damage to the conduct of government and the position of the administration.
The crisis presented an opportunity for certain entrenched powers in Washington who had wanted Nixon out of office since the day the American people put him there. Perhaps the most important of these was Katharine Meyer Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post. Graham had inherited the paper from her father, the first president of the World Bank whose family had long held sway in finance on multiple continents. Graham had no problem with Republicans per se, but she had always resented Nixon as an unpolished novus homo in the salons of Georgetown society—a resentment the president repaid in force. Envoys between the White House and the Post reported that Graham herself was going to use her control of the Post to turn the break-in embarrassment into a scandal that could derail Nixon’s presidency. In a particularly candid moment, Graham told columnist Stewart Alsop, “I hate him and I’m going to do everything I can to beat him.”
The press vendetta—embodied most forcefully in Graham and her Post, but extending well beyond them—was compounded by those of factions in government. Mark Felt, the number 2 at the FBI, fed information to Graham’s reporter Bob Woodward (until recently a naval intelligence officer) in hopes that he could unseat the bureau’s director and take the position for himself. Democrats and hostile Republicans in Congress began investigations in hopes of overturning the ’72 landslide indirectly by impeachment. Judges and bureaucrats seized on the opportunity to claim an advantage over the people’s elected president. John Dean, the slippery White House Counsel, turned in exchange for a slap on the wrist over his own involvement in the scandal.
Those last two developments converged on the fateful night of Saturday, October 20, 1973. In April, Nixon had been forced to fire Dean and to accept the resignations of Ehrlichman, Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst over their proximity to the Watergate debacle. To succeed Kleindienst, Nixon appointed Elliott Richardson, a sort of utility player in the administration. Richardson was a liberal Republican who nonetheless had proven himself exceptionally valuable, serving as undersecretary of State; as secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare; and as secretary of Defense before the move to the Justice Department.
Among Richardson’s first major responsibilities at Justice was to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate affair. The new attorney general likely thought he was transcending political concerns when he tapped Archibald Cox, a former Kennedy lackey whose father and grandfather both had been powerful Manhattan lawyers. But it very quickly became clear that Cox’s animosity toward the Nixon administration rivaled Katharine Graham’s. As part of his effort to turn the aftermath of the Watergate break-in into a political crisis for the president, Cox convinced Judge John J. Sirica to subpoena the White House for eight tapes of Oval Office conversations to which John Dean had testified.
The White House argued that the president’s conversations in the Oval Office were protected by executive privilege, and that they could not be pried into by a meddling prosecutor. To virtually anyone whose common sense had not been supplanted by a Harvard Law degree, this might have seemed obvious. Yet Cox would not relent.
The administration conceived a compromise. White House staff would produce transcripts of the eight tapes in question. The tapes themselves would then be turned over in full to Senator John Stennis, a widely respected Mississippi Democrat who had been elected to the upper chamber in 1947, the same year Nixon arrived in the House of Representatives. Stennis would then confirm the accuracy and completeness of the summaries to Cox and other investigators, while softening turns of phrase that might embarrass the administration. The terms of the proposal suggest that Nixon’s principal concern was not the content of the tapes so much as the fallout of his foul language in private becoming a matter of public record. Attorney General Richardson agreed that the White House proposal was a sound one.
Archibald Cox was not so magnanimous. He knew that the Stennis compromise would deny him Nixon’s scalp. Within hours, he had rejected the president’s proposal. This left Nixon with no choice but to remove the special prosecutor. He had encouraged the creation of the office, but he knew from the moment Richardson made his pick that it might end this way. Years later, he would recall in his memoirs, “If Richardson searched specifically for the man whom I least trusted, he could hardly have done better.”
Richardson had agreed at the outset not to fire Cox except in case of actual misconduct. The refusal for political reasons of a sensible compromise offered by the president of the United States plainly crossed that threshold; but, asked to carry out his duty, the attorney general balked. He resigned rather than remove the rogue prosecutor, as did his second-in-command, William Ruckelshaus. This left Solicitor General Robert Bork as acting attorney general, with the unenviable task of terminating Cox.
It is easy in these latter days to dismiss America’s domestic enemies as weak or evil men (or both). But Elliott Richardson was no Merrick Garland. At Utah Beach on D-Day, Richardson—then a 23-year-old lieutenant—ran alone across an active minefield to save the life of an injured officer; he returned home in 1945 with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. He was, however, a scion of old Puritan stock whose worst inherited tendencies were aroused by the horror of the war in Europe. He was a liberal who believed sincerely, even naively, in procedure and form. He also operated on a moral code that could not survive contact with depraved enemies. Upon his death on the last day of the millennium, he was eulogized by the Associated Press as “a prince of the Eastern Establishment.”
Depraved enemies abounded in Washington by 1973, and Elliott Richardson’s naive stand gave them an opportunity. Kay Graham’s Washington Post recognized that this episode could turn public opinion decisively against the president, if the right spin was applied. (That the bowtied Cox counted St. Paul’s and Harvard in his background no doubt contributed to the revulsion that drove her coverage.) Other left-wing journalists like Walter Cronkite, who held an unearned place of honor as “the most trusted man in America,” added the exodus from Justice to their arsenal of anti-Nixon propaganda, and they pursued this line with particular vigor. Within days, resolutions for impeachment had been introduced in the House of Representatives. Within months, Nixon had left office in disgrace.
But the consequences of the Saturday Night Massacre extended beyond even the destruction of one of the most beloved presidents in American history. A decade later, when Bork was presented as the obvious candidate for a seat on the Supreme Court, he was pilloried for carrying out his duty until the nomination died in the Senate. Gerhard Gessell, a partisan lawyer appointed to the bench by Lyndon Johnson, ruled that it had been illegal for the president—to whom the Constitution grants sole authority over the executive branch—to fire his subordinates when they refused to obey orders. This was a legal invention that began to invade American practice long before October 1973, but the Saturday Night Massacre and its aftermath carved the message in stone: the president in practice cannot and will not be allowed to exercise the powers granted to him by the Constitution.
Of course, this is only true when the president happens to be a conservative populist. It runs directly counter to the prevailing narrative of an “imperial presidency” popularized by the left wing in the years before Nixon’s election, but it is a fact plain enough for those with eyes to see. The crimes of the governing powers these last few years dwarf anything encountered by Nixon half a century ago; so too do the abuses of the media and the jealousy of the courts—not to mention the lawyers. Will the circle be unbroken?
The post The Saturday Night Massacre at 50 appeared first on The American Conservative.
House Republicans abandon a plan that would have given Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry authority until January.
On Wednesday, The American Conservative published a State of the Union blog post titled “Jim Jordan Shouldn’t Throw in the Towel.” As of Thursday morning, however, Jordan and his allies called a break in the fight over who will permanently replace former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy until the Ohio Republican eventually came back to his senses.
Instead, more establishment House Republicans laid plans to empower Rep. Patrick McHenry, McCarthy’s hand-picked speaker pro tem, until January 2024. The resolution to empower McHenry, written by Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, notably a hesitant Jordan supporter and a member of the House Appropriations Committee, would have conveniently empowered McHenry to act through the holidays. That timeline raised eyebrows among conservatives in Washington because it seriously raises the prospect of yet another Christmas omnibus.
Meanwhile, Democrats seemed to be sensing victory. Previously, House Democrats signaled they would be willing to support the resolution to empower McHenry. Yet again, the Republican House was heading straight for another vote where Democrats would have been more supportive of a maneuver from GOP leadership than the Republican conference. Furthermore, House Democrats were reportedly assuring McHenry that they would protect him from a motion to vacate. But Democrats have purportedly made this promise before to McCarthy; hence Rep. Nancy Pelosi had been allowed to keep her office in the Capitol until House Democrats did not save McCarthy from getting ousted and McHenry immediately ordered Pelosi and her team to vacate the space. At the time, McHenry justified the maneuver saying that office is typically given to the former speaker.
What was Jordan going to get in exchange? He would have maintained the title of speaker designee and would not have had to officially drop out from the race. Supposedly, Jordan would have a clear path to become speaker in January. But a whole lot can change in Washington over the course of six weeks, and there was no guarantee that Jordan’s title of speaker designee would matter all too much come January. Nevertheless, Joyce insisted that empowering McHenry “buys [Jordan] more time to do what he needs to do in private.” Few conservatives bought it; it was more likely that Jordan’s chances would be worse in January than they were early Thursday morning.
An empowered McHenry would be a disaster for conservatives in times of normal order, but even more disastrous in our current crises. McHenry, infamous among House conservatives for the way he and McCarthy handled the debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year, would have overseen negotiations with Democrats on appropriations bills, or, more likely, given the incompetence of Republican appropriators and a divided government with weakened House leadership, another continuing resolution and Christmas omnibus. He would have also overseen the passage of bills to provide military aid to Israel and Ukraine, and could have potentially moved on these packages without doing much at all to fix the nation’s wide-open southern border.
Which is why conservative Republicans came out in force against the establishment’s plan to empower McHenry on Thursday. While the House was considering the resolution, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado told The American Conservative that “the American people demanded Jim Jordan as speaker, and it’s enraging that their voices were disregarded. Settling for a temporary speaker until January is not what the American people want.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said he was willing to do “everything” to block the resolution, according to POLITICO. Those seeking to empower the speaker pro temp, Gaetz continued, are “twisting and torturing the constitution to empower a temporary speaker.”
Like Gaetz, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas believes empowering McHenry might be unconstitutional. “If the @HouseGOP dares cut a deal with Dems to empower a Speaker-Pro-Tem in violation of tradition & norms, & possibly the Constitution to likely pass another CR at Pelosi levels & more supplemental (not paid for) spending—including Ukraine… the GOP might as well be the Whigs,” Roy tweeted.
Roy continued in another tweet: “We’ve never empowered a Speaker-pro-tem with full powers w/o having chosen a duly elected Speaker & for @HouseGOP to join w/ Dems to do so now not only raises constitutional concerns, but represents an unforgivable step to coalition government & likely decimation in 2024.”
“Breaking with centuries of tradition by creating a non-Speaker speakership is a disastrous ‘solution’ for a handful of establishment Republicans who are huffy about voting for Jim Jordan for reasons they are unable to articulate,” Senator Mike Lee of Utah told TAC while the House was considering the move toward McHenry. “Sour grapes are no excuse to damage the House in such a way.”
Thankfully, Jordan and other House Republicans woke up to this reality over the course of a four-hour conference meeting on Thursday. “You do not want to take an individual that was appointed to a position and then grant them additional, excessive, special powers to conduct the affairs of Congress,” Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana told TAC in a phone interview. “This would have been a very dangerous precedent.” Inside the meeting, “there were a lot of people that spoke much more eloquently than myself who have legal backgrounds that said that is not the way our government is supposed to function.”
“Those powers for [McHenry] are very limited in the Constitution, as the speaker pro tem, and we need to focus on the one job he has and the primary job we have right now, which is to elect the speaker,” Rep. Bob Good of Virginia told TAC in a phone interview. “We don’t need to improperly relieve that pressure or that consequence for not having made that decision yet.”
“Thankfully, the resolution was was rejected by the conference this afternoon and we’re not going to have that brought to the floor,” Good continued. “Thankfully, there was reluctance from the conference to pass something like that with Democrat votes, which would only be because we were putting in place a speaker that was appealing or attractive to Democrats, which would be not a very good thing, or we were buying Democrat votes with concessions. The consensus was if that was ever to be brought to the floor and voted on, it was very clear that a significant portion of the conference would not support it in any fashion.”
“Look back to January,” Rosendale implored. “When we had the big speakers of race, a lot of that was not just about who was going to be speaker, but it was about the rules that we were proposing to have changed. We had seen such a consolidation of power into the speaker’s office, and the Rules Committee over the last 15 to 18 years that the individual members had diminished their voice.”
Granting the proposed powers to the temporary speaker, Rosendale said, would be ceding individual members’ power and concentrating it in leadership all over again. “You just cannot grant these excessive exceptional powers to an individual, and certainly one that was not elected,” he argued.
“In January, we were voting against the establishment, the status quo, the continuation of the failures of Republican leadership from the past, which unfortunately I believe was validated over the previous month, and resulted in the speaker being removed,” Good told TAC. “We were very open and very clear about our opposition to Kevin McCarthy as speaker, and people understood, even if they didn’t agree, the reasons why. We were also receiving a tremendous amount of encouragement and support from the grassroots from our districts who did not want Kevin McCarthy speaker. It is the complete opposite now.”
“In all fairness,” Rosendale continued, “Patrick McHenry stated from the very beginning that he did not want any powers, did not think that he had been granted any powers, and that his only task was to keep things in order until such time a new speaker was elected.”
TAC asked Good if he agreed with Rosendale’s assessment: “I do think Patrick McHenry has done a good job of restricting himself or confining himself to those limited powers. I think he’s been fair, he’s been objective, and I think he’s been effective in that he has been deferential to the speaker designee, previously Steve Scalise now Jim Jordan, in letting them sort of control the the schedule on voting and not voting and that sort of thing.”
McHenry, according to Rosendale, “maintained that very stance today and said that he was opposed to this resolution.” As were other crucial members of Republican leadership, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and GOP Whip Tom Emmer. “As I have made very clear over the last few days, we should never allow a Democrat-backed coalition government. Ever. The only coalition we should be looking to build is a Republican coalition uniting all of our conference,” Emmer reportedly claimed after Thursday’s conference meeting. McCarthy and Jordan, however, initially spoke favorably on the resolution.
“When I spoke to the conference today,” Rosendale told TAC, “I said, look, there were six of us that were opposed to Kevin, and we knew that we were never going to vote for Kevin. That’s why we did not in round one, not in round five, not in round 10, not round 15. But what I saw was the loss of decorum on the House floor and the devolving of the institution to the place where physical conflict was getting ready to start taking place.”
“That’s when the six of us huddled together and said, in the best interests of the conference and of the country, we’re going to vote present and allow Kevin to go ahead and become the speaker without compromising our integrity and voting for him,” Rosendale continued. “I said I think it’s time for the 20 people that are opposing Jim to have honest conversations with him and figure out what we can do to move the conference forward. We’ve got 200 People that have voted for Jim, and we know that he is absolutely the best person to be the spokesman for the Republican Party coming out of the House of Representatives.”
Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida emerged from the Thursday meeting and declared, “The resolution is dead.”
Jordan now has to meet with his detractors, and try to bring them on side—an issue that has been complicated by rogue, freak actors levying death threats against GOP holdouts. Good told TAC that the objectors “have made no case for their opposition to him and have not publicly stated why they oppose Jim Jordan. I would submit they have no case to make and nothing they can sell. I’m quite confident they’re receiving tremendous pressure from their constituents to support Jim Jordan. He is, I believe, the second most popular Republican in the country. And I think for once we should listen to the grassroots, our constituents, our voters, the Republican base who overwhelmingly wants Jim Jordan.”
TAC asked Rosendale how he might be able to win those votes. “I’m not 100 percent sure,” Rosendale admitted. “What he’s been trying to do, which I respect tremendously, is to have conversations and come to an agreement with them without arm twisting and utilizing the the D.C. cartel, which typically whips hard to try and gain votes. Jim is trying to earn those votes, and I think that that is incredibly honorable.”
Tragically, Jordan’s fate still lies in the hands of a hodgepodge of appropriators, hawks, and liberal Republicans, which TAC has previously reported on. Good agreed with TAC’s previous accounting, saying, “the makeup of the 20 or so resistors are predominantly either appropriators—and appropriators like to appropriate money and spend money, and perhaps they’re concerned that Jim Jordan may want to help us rein in our spending as we’ve told our voters we would—those who are hyper defense focused and may be concerned about any accountability for how the taxpayer dollars are spent in the area of defense, and then you’ve got some folks in some Biden leaning districts that have expressed some concern about voting for a conservative speaker.”
It’s hardly likely that temporarily backing down will do anything to help the Ohio Congressman’s case, and the threat of empowering a temporary speaker might not yet be over, given Joyce says he is reworking the resolution’s language. Nevertheless, Good told TAC that “Jim Jordan absolutely represents a rejection of the status quo, the establishment, the elites in the donor class, the special interests, and the lobbyists trying to select our speaker, and he is a speaker that is supported by the people.”
Many of Jordan’s objectors have something else in common, too, as Rep. Kevin Hern pointed out: “It’s more the senior members.” Oh, goodie. Just another cadre of intransigent Boomers who’ve presided over the destruction of the American way while claiming the mantle of decency and principle.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
The post No Temporary Fixes appeared first on The American Conservative.
State of the Union: Jim Jordan lost the second round of voting for a new Speaker of the House by a larger margin than the first, but he shouldn’t quit.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio was unable to win the requisite votes to become Speaker of the House on Wednesday morning. It was the second round of voting on a Speaker to replace the ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, and the seventeenth time the 118th Congress has voted on a Speaker given it took 15 rounds for McCarthy to win in January.
As The American Conservative reported, Jordan received 200 votes on the first ballot. Twenty Republican holdouts scattered their votes amongst McCarthy, Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. Thomas Massie, Rep. Mike Garcia, Rep. Tom Emmer, Rep. Tom Cole, and former Rep. Lee Zeldin. After Tuesday’s vote, Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a Jordan objector who has personal problems with Jordan over the Ohioan’s handling of antitrust issues in the Judiciary Committee, told MSNBC he believed Jordan would lose support in the following vote.
Buck’s prediction came true. In the second vote, Jordan received 199 votes, while Scalise received seven, McCarthy recorded five, Zeldin got three, and Reps. Byron Donalds, Emmer, Garcia, Carol Miller, Kay Granger, and Bruce Westerman had one apiece. Former Speaker John Boehner also received one vote.
In Wednesday’s vote, Jordan was able to earn both Rep. Victoria Spartz and Rep. Doug Lamalfa’s vote. Jordan had three new objectors, however; Reps. Vern Buchanan, Drew Ferguson, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks all moved away from Jordan in round two.
Some House Republicans, either because they are loyal to Scalise or McCarthy, or because they are liberals who think Jordan is too conservative, were whispering on Capitol Hill and informing members of the media that they expected the number of Jordan defections to be much higher than a net loss of one for the Ohio Congressman.
Lamalfa, one of the flips to Jordan, reportedly told members of the media that after round three, Jordan should consider pulling out of the race. After it took 15 rounds for McCarthy to become Speaker in January, Jordan should throw in the towel after just three? Absolutely not.
Even with one additional vote against him, Jordan’s in a much better position than he was at the end of last week when 55 members of the House GOP said they wouldn’t vote for Jordan on the floor.
What’s more, anyone who says Jordan should surrender because a prolonged fight makes it more likely that centrists will partner with Democrats to elect a consensus Speaker isn’t thinking beyond the initial vote. More likely than not, this bipartisan coalition completely falls apart when it has to pass a new rules package. When they’re not able to do so, Republicans have a clear path to vacate the consensus chair, and it’s back to square one.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that any Republican who sides with Democrats in voting for the next Speaker is committing political suicide.
Jordan and his allies must hold the line. As one man once wrote in a book titled The Art of the Deal, “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.”
“That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.”
The post Jim Jordan Shouldn’t Throw in the Towel appeared first on The American Conservative.
Like Kevin McCarthy before him, Jim Jordan is trying to wrestle the Speaker’s gavel from twenty holdouts.
Ten months ago, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, then the Republican nominee for Speaker of the House, had to cut a deal with twenty conservative holdouts, nicknamed “the Twenty,” to become Speaker. McCarthy’s potential replacement, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, is now dealing with a new, very different Twenty. While McCarthy was dogged by the House Freedom Caucus and friends, Jordan faces a blob of establishment-type Republicans composed mostly of appropriators, warmongers, and liberals.
After a week of closed-door conference meetings, media sniping, and back-room dealing, House Republicans took the fight over who will replace McCarthy as Speaker of the House to the floor. The first round of voting Tuesday revealed that there is a path for Jordan to become the leader of the Republican-controlled chamber, but it is nonetheless uphill, narrow, and treacherous.
The push to shed light on where things currently stand with the House GOP’s search for a new Speaker was headed by none other than Jordan. On Friday, Jordan became House Republicans’ nominee after Rep. Steve Scalise, who was unwilling to take the fight to the floor, withdrew his name from consideration. After the Republican caucus voted Jordan as their Speaker nominee on Friday in a 124-81 vote over Georgia’s Rep. Austin Scott, who threw his hat in the ring just to give Jordan objectors an alternative.
When the House Republican conference took another vote asking if members would support Jordan if a vote came to the floor, Jordan’s opposition dropped to 55 members. It’s worth mentioning that Scott said he’d be willing to vote for Jordan on the floor.
Before House Republicans voted on the new Speaker on Tuesday, the Ohioan and his allies had to identify the ringleaders of the opposition and smoke them out. Meanwhile, gettable votes had to be courted and their concerns assuaged. In the words of staunch Jordan ally Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee to POLITICO last weekend, “what is going to happen is, they are going to vote on the floor, and then they hear from the grassroots.”
Intense opposition was mounting against a more conservative Speaker of the House by weak-kneed Republicans even before Jordan secured the nomination. Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama left a Republican conference meeting Thursday in a huff, though his temper wasn’t so unchecked as it was in January when he had to be restrained from assaulting Florida’s Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Upon his departure, the Armed Services Committee Chairman told members of the media that he would be willing to hear out what concessions House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats would need to help elect a new Speaker. As Rogers openly courted Democrats, he repeatedly labeled the eight Republicans who voted for McCarthy’s ousting “traitors.” One has to wonder what that makes Rogers.
“The bottom line is we have a very fractured conference, and to limit ourselves to just getting 217 out of our conference, I think, is not a wise path,” Rogers said, according to NBC News. The Alabama Congressman added that Democratic votes could be “absolutely” necessary for electing a new Speaker, but “they haven’t offered jack.” Nevertheless, Rogers promised some Republicans were “willing to work with them, but they gotta tell us what they need.” Later, once the conference voted Jordan as the new nominee, Rogers reportedly claimed there was nothing Jordan could do to win his vote.
Given the circumstances, Jordan’s tactics have not been so rough-and-tumble as some might have expected. Once Jordan secured the nomination and made it clear he was willing to take the fight to the floor, he reportedly encouraged skeptics and holdouts to talk with him about their concerns. An unnamed source told POLITICO that in each of these conversations, the skeptical member walked away supporting Jordan.
Though Jordan himself took the expression “you get more flies with honey than with vinegar” to heart in his personal strategy to whip up votes, some of his allies have been playing hardball. Fox News’ Sean Hannity even got involved. Hannity’s team was reportedly sending queries to Jordan holdouts saying, “Hannity would like to know why during a war breaking out between Israel and Hamas, with the war in Ukraine, with the wide open borders, with a budget that’s unfinished why would Rep xxxx be against Rep Jim Jordan for speaker?”
On Sunday, Juliegrace Brufke, Axios’s Capitol Hill reporter, tweeted a photo of the query template and added, “Moderates are growing increasingly irritated with the tactics Jordan allies are using to pressure them into voting for him…. One lawmaker said the push is counterproductive to swaying Jordan skeptics.”
One such skeptic was Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana. She voiced her disapproval of tactics employed by an unlikely member from among Jordan’s allies: Kevin McCarthy. In a statement that Spartz reportedly read aloud to the House Republican conference, she said, “I voted to support Jim Jordan in conference, but what happened Friday night is not acceptable. After undermining Steve and appearing to make some kind of a deal with Jim, Kevin forced the conference to adjourn and announced that Jim Jordan was going to be our speaker next week. Unfortunately, Jim did not object to Kevin, as also on a few other occasions as the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.”
“Republicans are not sheep and will refuse to support [Jordan] if he will try to use the same McCarthy intimidation techniques on members on the floor, even if I have to run again, so McCarthy and his friends have a chance to primary me,” the statement concluded.
By Monday morning, however, a considerable bulk of Jordan’s opposition had mostly fallen apart. Rogers’ effort to deny Jordan the gavel by courting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was in ruins. The Alabama Congressman crawled back to his side of the aisle and endorsed Jordan after the pair had “two cordial, thoughtful, and productive conversations” over the weekend, according to a tweet from Rogers. Rogers added the pair, “agreed on the need for Congress to pass a strong NDAA, appropriations to fund our government’s vital functions, and other important legislation like the Farm Bill.” One concession that Jordan may have reportedly made to more hawkish members of the Republican conference is tying aid to Israel to an increase in funding to secure the southern border.
Beyond Rogers, Reps. Ken Calvert of California and Ann Wagner of Missouri, previously thought to be “Never Jordan” votes, provided some truth to the claim that Jordan’s whip strategy was working when they endorsed Jordan based on conversations they had with the Republican nominee for Speaker. “Keeping America safe is my top priority in Congress,” Calvert tweeted. “After having a conversation with Jim Jordan about how we must get the House back on a path to achieve our national security and appropriations goals, I will be supporting him for Speaker on the floor. Let’s get to work.”
Other Jordan holdouts continued to get behind Jordan over the weekend. Rep. Robert Aderholt, a member of the crucial Appropriations Committee, came out publicly in support of Jordan’s bid. Reps. Drew Ferguson, Rob Wittman, and Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul also announced that they would be voting for Jordan on the House floor.
Nevertheless, Jordan still had considerable opposition. Rep. Carlos Gimenez of California continued to pledge his support to McCarthy, the former Speaker who has since gotten behind Jordan. Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas hinted he would withhold his support and again floated the idea of centrist Republicans working with Democrats on a deal for a consensus Speaker.
When it came time to vote for a new Speaker on Tuesday, Gimenez and Womack were among the Republicans who voted for candidates not named Jim Jordan; yet Jordan had more than halved the opposition bloc that was 55 members strong on Friday.
It was highly unlikely that Jordan was going to become Speaker on the first round of voting Tuesday. Beyond Gimenez, Reps. Don Bacon, Mike Lawler, Mike Kelly, and Mario Diaz-Balart were expected to be firm no’s. Womack hadn’t publicly announced he’d oppose Jordan, but he and Reps. Spartz, Ken Buck, John Rutherford, and others were considered to lean towards no.
Jordan can only afford to have four Republican defections. In round one, 20 Republicans voted against Jordan in favor of other Republican candidates—far fewer than 55, and the same number of Republicans who voted against McCarthy from ballots three to 11 in January. Jordan received 200 votes, Scalise got seven, McCarthy got six, former Rep. Lee Zeldin got three, and Reps. Thomas Massie, Mike Garcia, Tom Emmer, and Tom Cole each recorded one. Then there was Jeffries, who predictably received every Democratic vote with 212.
The Jordan holdouts predictably fell into four camps: foreign-policy hawks, swing-district Republicans, appropriators, and personal objectors.
Seven of the twenty Jordan objectors were members of the House Appropriations Committee. The massive committee, it is often said in Washington, behaves like a party unto itself. Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger was joined by committee representatives Womack, Diaz-Balart, Rutherford, Gonzales, Ellzey, and Simpson. A chief concern of these appropriators is their reported concern that Jordan will engage in fiscal brinkmanship with a shutdown coming down the pike on November 17.
The American Conservative asked Rep. Simpson why he voted for Scalise rather than Jordan in the first ballot Tuesday. “Two weeks ago, we watched eight so-called ‘Republicans’ work with Democrats to oust Speaker McCarthy,” a statement sent by Simpson’s team read. “The eight had no plan after their destructive vote—instead, their actions have stalled our critical appropriations process, paralyzed the House’s legislative business, and left Republicans looking like we are incapable of governing.” (If the appropriations process wasn’t “paralyzed” before McCarthy’s ouster, one has to wonder what word Simpson would use to describe it.)
“I have publicly stated that I would support the Republican nominee who receives a majority of Republican votes—last week, the Republican Conference went from supporting Speaker-Designee Scalise without giving Steve Scalise proper consideration on the House floor,” the statement continued. “I voted for Steve Scalise in the first round on the floor because he rightfully earned our conference nomination and deserved the opportunity to be considered before the full House of Representatives.”
The aforementioned Bacon and Gimenez, both members of the Armed Services Committee, were joined by two other committee members, Reps. Jen Kiggans and Nick LaLota. Though Jordan managed to sway the hawkish and apparently short-tempered Rogers, it appears that Rogers’s reach didn’t extend to all the members of committee, who are concerned that Jordan will not adequately arm Ukraine.
No surprise that the establishment types that fill the money and warmongering committees mostly voted for status-quo leadership candidates McCarthy and Scalise. There is some overlap in the groups, however. LaLota is not only a member of the Armed Services Committee but also from a Biden-won district. He and Reps. Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito, and Andrew Garbarino were Republican members from Biden-won districts that voted against Jordan.
As for those who have personal objections to Jordan is the aforementioned Spartz, though her ire is directed mostly toward McCarthy, and Buck, who has beef with Jordan over the handling of antitrust and Big Tech legislation. Previously, Jordan chose Massie over Buck to lead the House Judiciary’s subcommittee on antitrust. Buck is ratcheting up his crusade, telling MSNBC that he expects Jordan to lose support in the next vote.
Buck will have to wait until Wednesday to see whether he’s right. After planning on having another vote Tuesday evening, Jordan and Republicans pushed the second round to 11 o’clock Wednesday morning. Thus far, however, it appears that Jordan has been able to flip one of his detractors: Rep. John James of Michigan, who cast the sole vote for Cole on Tuesday.
Just ten months ago, most of Jordan’s objectors decried the twenty who opposed McCarthy’s bid and wanted assurances on appropriations, border security, and committee work enshrined in the rules and personnel. The original Twenty’s fears came true. Now Jordan’s objectors are part of a different Twenty that stand between a Speaker nominee and the gavel; but with no clear principle holding them together, will they be as successful as the original Twenty? If they are, Jordan will only have himself to blame, and McCarthy comes out looking most impressive of all.
The post Jim Jordan Wrestles With a New Twenty appeared first on The American Conservative.
Is the former wrestler poised to take down Kevin McCarthy’s heir apparent? The American Conservative spoke to House Republicans on what they’re looking for in the next Speaker of the House.
“I will not run for speaker again,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who had just been removed as Speaker of the House by a motion to vacate filed by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and supported by seven other House Republicans, told reporters Tuesday. “I’ll have the [Republican] conference pick somebody else.”
Who that “somebody else” may be is yet to be determined. As it stands now, the House plans to return on Tuesday to debate about potential candidates and vote to fill the vacancy left by McCarthy Wednesday. The American Conservative spoke to several House Republicans about what kind of qualities they’re looking for in the next speaker, their chosen candidate, and what else could be afoot with the impending shakeup to Republican leadership.
In the hours after McCarthy’s ousting earlier that day on October 3, most members of the Republican conference were focusing their ire on the eight members who voted to remove McCarthy from his post. Capitol Hill held its breath to see if the ousted Speaker would grasp once more for the Speaker’s gavel, which had since fallen into the hands of Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who used it cartoonishly once to adjourn the House for the following week.
“Once we left the house floor after the successful vote to remove the Speaker, I began to assemble with a few dozen of my colleagues,” Rep. Bob Good of Virginia told TAC via a phone interview. “It was unanimous that they would not support [McCarthy] if he were to try to run. He wouldn’t have the votes and he shouldn’t do it. I don’t know how widespread it was beyond those few dozen. And I don’t know if he got counseled out of the fact or realized he wasn’t going to get there and people were ready to turn the page.”
Speaking to TAC over the phone, Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana told TAC he’s “glad” McCarthy is not running for Speaker again. “I think [McCarthy] recognized, he started hearing conversations, I’m guessing, that there were other people that were ready then to run for Speaker, which in January, we just weren’t able to get those folks to step up,” Rosendale explained. “They, I firmly believe, just feared for retribution. They weren’t ready to step up yet. But once he was removed, they were because his tenure had come to an end.”
In email correspondence with TAC, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said that she was “somewhat surprised that [McCarthy] didn’t put up a stronger fight to defend himself before being ousted.”
However, I’m not surprised at all that he doesn’t want to run again,” she added. “McCarthy bears sole responsibility for his removal. In January, he lacked the votes to become Speaker, so he struck a deal with many members of the HFC, promising actions like impeaching Biden, passing individual spending bills instead of continuing resolutions or omnibus packages,” Boebert explained. “He failed to deliver on these promises, resulting in a significant victory for House Democrats. When someone secures a job based on promises and fails to fulfill them, their termination is self-inflicted.”
Yet, in the vote to remove McCarthy, Boebert voted “no for now.” TAC asked her about her choice of words, to which Boebert replied, “’no for now’ wasn’t a vote in support of the Speaker; it was a vote against the timing of the measure to remove him. We are just 40 days away from a government shutdown, and the top priority is passing 12 individual appropriations bills to reduce government spending, prevent a shutdown, secure our borders, and prioritize America’s interests.” Boebert directed TAC to her previous statement in which she explained, “seeing as legislative days were added to pass the remaining eight appropriations bills to properly fund the federal government, I didn’t want to spend valuable time on a long, protracted Speaker fight.”
Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, however, was “not surprised”: “Speaker of the House is an incredibly difficult job. Our conference cannot go back after last week. We must look ahead to solving the key issues facing our nation.”
McCarthy’s announcement that he would not be running for Speaker again sparked a chain reaction that has since consumed the southern side of the Capitol complex. Members started floating names that could potentially place McCarthy, such as Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, Republican Study Committee Head Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and, as TAC reported, Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota.
“We need a leader with the basic qualities of leadership,” Good stated plainly when asked what qualities he’s going to be looking for in the next Speaker of the House. “Someone who is trusted by the conference, and someone who is a fighter, and understands negotiations and leverage and that will fight for more than just trying to become Speaker.”
But Good is not ignorant of the political realities that currently constrain the Republican-controlled House. “With a majority in just the House, we’re not gonna get everything we want, but we better get some things that we want and a negotiated compromise shouldn’t mean just do what the Democrats want, which has been the history of the Republican Party now for 30 years,” said Good.
Rosendale echoed Good’s call for a trustworthy Speaker. “Trustworthiness is absolutely the most vital trait that anybody can have up here [in Washington],” Rosendale claimed. “This is what we tried to express nine months ago. Kevin will make any kind of a promise. He’ll make a promise to you, but he’ll turn around and make another promise to someone else, which completely negates your promise.”
“The next thing I’m looking for is leadership and vision,” Rosendale explained, “a vision of where we want to go, and the ability, the leadership ability and skills to organize the group and help pursue it. You have to be able to incite enthusiasm in your vision.”
By early Wednesday, Jordan announced his candidacy to be the next speaker of the House. The Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter to members of the Republican conference asking for their support for his candidacy:
We are at a critical Crossroad in our nation’s history. Now is the time for our Republican conference to come together to keep our promises to Americans. The problems we Face are challenging, but they are not insurmountable. We can focus on the changes that improve the country and unite us in offering real solutions. But no matter what we do, we must do it together as a conference. I respectfully ask for your support for Speaker of the House of Representatives.
As for those challenges, Jordan listed “soaring crime across the country,” “open-border policies that have caused chaos and left our country vulnerable,” “double standards in federal law enforcement,” and, of course, “get[ting] our fiscal house in order” as the government stares down another potential government shutdown when the continuing resolution expires on November 17.
Meanwhile, Scalise was busily calling colleagues and met privately with Texas’ twenty-five-member House GOP delegation about throwing his hat in the ring for Speaker of the House. That afternoon, Scalise announced his desire to replace McCarthy as Speaker of the House. In a “Dear Colleague” letter of his own, the Louisiana congressman made an emotional appeal to House Republicans rooted in the shooting by a left-wing lunatic at a Congressional Baseball Game practice in 2017 that almost took Scalise’s life.
“I know the coming weeks ahead will be some of the most arduous times we will face together, but this Conference is worth fighting for – we cannot lose sight of our shared mission. Now, more than ever, we must mend the deep wounds that exist within our Conference and focus on our objectives so we can get back to work for the millions of people who are counting on us,” Scalise wrote. “It is with that sense of responsibility and purpose that I am seeking the Conference’s nomination for Speaker of the House.”
Just prior to Scalise’s announcement, however, Scalise said that Emmer, the House GOP Whip that was working the phones as he considered a run, “would be a great speaker.” Emmer was gearing up to do just that until Scalise made a play of his own, causing Emmer to quickly back Scalise and shift his focus to a bid for Majority Leader.
Some were less enthused by Scalise’s bid. One unidentified member of the Freedom Caucus told NBC News that, “since conservatives are concerned about the poor scheduling of appropriations bills this year, why would we elevate the person in charge of the schedule, the majority leader, to speaker?”
As for getting new blood not only into the GOP’s House leadership but atop it, Good told TAC, “I do think that would be ideal, but that is difficult.”
“Those who would have influence, stature, credibility within the conference in terms of being perceived as someone who’d get 218 are part, to some degree at least, of the leadership structure, whether they’re a chairman or they’re the majority leader, or a major caucus leader or something to that effect,” Good continued. Nevertheless, “deposing the speaker was a tremendous blow to the swamp cartel and the uniparty establishment structure in Washington,” because “it’s much bigger than just a Speaker. This system, this place, this institution is designed to prevent change. There’s a lot of people who are benefiting from that system and are invested in that system, and so we need disruption in Congress.”
Jordan was receiving endorsements of his own from Reps. Jim Banks, Thomas Massie, and Darrell Issa, among others. Later, Jordan would also receive the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
Banks tweeted out his support for Jordan’s bid, writing, “When it comes to negotiating on behalf of the House GOP Majority with the Senate and White House, I can’t think of anyone stronger than @Jim_Jordan to be our next Speaker of the House. He never backs down and has my full support.”
TAC spoke to Massie over the phone about his endorsement of Jordan’s candidacy. “I’ve served with Jim Jordan on the Oversight Committee and on the Judiciary Committee, and what I’ve noticed is that he runs it almost like a sports team,” he said. “And he’s a good coach. He gets everybody to perform to the best of their abilities.”
When the Judiciary Committee is planning a hearing, Massie said, Jordan “figures out a batting lineup” that will best challenge witnesses and build a strong narrative for Republicans, rather than going in the order of seniority. “I think the whole conference would benefit if we had somebody like that as Speaker,” Massie asserted.
Jordan, Massie believes, also understands that the discovery and fact finding that goes on in GOP run hearings, whether about the border or the Biden family, needs to be followed by legislation. “I would love to have Jim Jordan deciding which of those reforms comes to the floor and actually gets a vote,” Massie said.
“Jim Jordan will be able to understand what’s going on in Judiciary and Oversight, having been chairman of those committees and participated on those committees,” Massie explained. “And I think he can weave in whatever’s going on in those committees with the rest of the conference…. He doesn’t mince his words. He doesn’t stutter. He is able to express his thoughts clearly. And I would love to have somebody who’s covering all of our issues for our party who can communicate that well as the Speaker.”
As for the qualities Issa was looking for in a Speaker, the California Congressman told TAC, “we need to have somebody, because of some of the comments made about our former Speaker, that everyone knows that what they say they will do in a way in which no one can accuse the new Speaker of being slippery or not having the courage of his convictions.” Issa believes Jordan fits that description, but that’s by no means a slight to Scalise, whom Issa says “is also somebody with a pretty solid reputation.”
“To paraphrase William F. Buckley, we need the most conservative candidate that can win,” Issa claimed. The House GOP agenda, Issa said, “is clearly going to move to the right.” That gives Jordan an advantage, Issa claimed, “mostly because Steve is already part of the establishment. If what we’ve done so far is unacceptable to people on the right, then, quite frankly, he’s unacceptable.”
“If you want change, vote for change,” Issa said, further explaining why a Scalise candidacy might not be acceptable to some conservative members of the conference. “Steve and everyone down ticket there, whether we like it or not, was part of whatever their dissatisfaction was that led to the Speaker’s ouster.” Some conservative members might be “Never Scalise” as they were “Never McCarthy,” “and that puts us right back where we were before, and were going to have to try to find that out in conference,” Issa told TAC.
Issa believes Jordan is the most conservative candidate that can win because through his support for McCarthy in the initial Speaker’s fight in January and during the motion to vacate, Jordan has put himself in a good position by “hav[ing] a foot in both camps.”
There appears to be credence to what Issa says, given House Freedom Caucus members and other aligned members have also come out in support of Jordan’s candidacy. “I support Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House,” Donalds told TAC via email. “At the end of the day, we are going need somebody who can lead our conference going forward and get us prepared to keep a majority going into 2024.”
“Jim Jordan can step right into our top leadership spot, get us back on track, and lead our conference. He has been at the center of our nation’s political battles for quite some time, and he knows the pitfalls,” Donalds wrote. “I think it’s time that we do have a sea change with respect to leadership in the Republican party on Capitol Hill. I have a lot of respect for my friend and colleague Steve Scalise, but I think the time has come for Jim Jordan to assume the gavel and become the next Speaker of the House.”
Boebert told TAC that “I am seeking a Speaker who embodies honesty, strength, that is committed to draining the Swamp, that will cut federal spending fueling inflation, and that will take real action to get the country back on track.”
“To address the needs of our nation,” Boebert continued, “it is imperative to pass twelve individual appropriation bills, ensure border security, and deliver tangible results for the American people. These demands are not exclusive to the HFC; they are essential for everyone in our country.”
As Boebert claimed, the first task of the new Speaker of the House will be ensuring GOP priorities are protected while avoiding a government shutdown, further temporary funding measures, or an omnibus towards the holidays. Massie told TAC that at this juncture, “when you vote for the next Speaker, you’re voting for a package. You’re getting a speaker plus a game plan for getting us through the appropriations process.”
“I think Jim Jordan has a good plan,” Massie claimed. “He wants to take advantage of the one percent cut that I suggested that got put into the debt limit deal this summer. There’s a one percent cut signed into law that happens in January and takes effect in the spring if we don’t have the twelve separate bills done.”
“If you have something as cataclysmic as the shutdown,” Massie continued, “you lose a lot of the conference… I think Jordan has a plan to use that as an incentive instead of a shutdown as an incentive to get us to twelve separate bills.”
“If we elect Jim Jordan, I believe we can move all the appropriations bills, if not in six weeks then close to it,” Issa said of the looming deadline for the continuing resolution. However, passing the appropriations bills is just the beginning of the difficulties the new Speaker will face. “I believe after we move them on to the Senate, the Senate will likely cram us with a completely different bill,” Issa said. “Therein lies the dilemma. A possible shutdown, not because we didn’t pass twelve bills or substantially twelve bills, but a shutdown because the Senate is so different from the House.” Negotiating with the Democratic Senate, Issa says, could trigger another motion to vacate if some members of the House are displeased.
To avoid another motion to vacate, Issa suggested that the House might consider keeping the rules agreed upon in January by McCarthy and House conservatives but tweak the threshold of members needed to trigger a motion to vacate. “I’ve said this, a little bit tongue in cheek, but the number is not a bad alternative: You should not be able to have a motion to vacate with any less than the number of Apostles.”
“We’re not talking about a big number, but one is just too little,” Issa claimed.
Good has a different view of those requesting to scrap or alter the current rules governing the motion to vacate, however. Their arguments remind Good of efforts to pack the court, scrap the filibuster and pack the Senate by adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, and the desire to scrap the electoral college after a presidential election “because we don’t like these outcomes of how the institution is supposed to operate.” Those kinds of reforms “are dangerous, dangerous things to do.”
For Donalds, the Speaker’s fight “is not about commitments.”
“Conservative members must have trust that the next Speaker of the House will fight hard on key issues like securing the border, energy independence, and cutting government spending,” Donalds said. “The next Speaker will need that trust and belief to win their votes.”
During the Speaker’s fight in January, Rosendale claimed, “All I wanted was to restore Congress to its status. I wanted to be able to have that rules package passed so that we could have 72 hours to review legislation, I wanted to be able to have single subject legislation, and I wanted to be able to have an open rule process so that we could bring all bills to the floor and propose amendments and discuss and debate and let the best ideas win. And so that’s what I will be working to maintain, just make sure we keep the rules package in there. Because quite frankly, that is not some radical idea or a deviation from the norm. It is nothing more than a restoration of the pre-existing conditions of Congress, before we had this disgraceful consolidation of power.”
Rosendale has yet to endorse a candidate for Speaker of the House. “Look, there are so many very intelligent, highly qualified individuals that are ethical and stand on integrity that I can consider,” Rosendale told TAC. “And so what I’m going to do is wait until Tuesday, and see. So we’re going to have, you know, whoever wants to audition, if you will, for the Speaker’s position, come up there and speak to us all. And I want to hear that vision. I want to hear somebody who’s going to incite me into enthusiasm, into getting some work done. And I want to know that when they give their word it is their bond.”
Good hasn’t endorsed a candidate for Speaker yet either. “I have resisted speaking to specific candidates. I don’t plan to endorse anyone at this point,” Good told TAC. “I jokingly said to a couple of candidates that reached out to me that I’m going to not do in their campaign by coming out now with public endorsement because invariably, there’d probably be some folks in the conference who’d say ‘I’m not voting for Good’s guy no matter what.’”
“But in all seriousness,” Good continued, “I want to see them vetted, tested, challenged… So I’m gonna hold that and just resist any comments at this point on specific candidates.”
For all the talk about the next speaker shoring up their rightward flank, this Speakers race might be determined by centrists and Republican House members elected in districts that President Biden carried in the 2020 election. This cohort, which backed McCarthy in January, also has the power to hold up a Speaker candidate that they do not approve of; however, while conservative members moved as a block in January, these members seem divided over whether Jordan or Scalise should lead the conference moving forward.
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito of New York told reporters that he believes Scalise, “understands what people in moderate districts need,” according to POLITICO. Meanwhile, POLITICO reported that Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota has praised Jordan: “Who Jim Jordan is versus who I thought he was before I got to Congress are two completely different people. I’ve never seen anybody who works harder, prepares more and allows members … the opportunity and activity to engage and contribute to the team.”
Just sixty of the 221 Republicans currently in the House have made public endorsements, according to CNN, which means that there’s quite a lot of work to do for both Scalise and Jordan in their quest for 218 votes to win the speakership. At a closed-door meeting of the House GOP conference Monday regarding the Speaker vacancy, sources told TAC that neither Jordan or Scalise gave remarks in favor of their candidacy. One source familiar with the matter told TAC that there was a lot of residual tension and anger percolating about the conference; another said that the Monday evening meeting, “did little to move the needle in one way or the other.”
Jordan and Scalise will make their pitch Tuesday evening at a candidate forum where either could emerge as the odds-on favorite to be the next Speaker—or not. At the aforementioned Monday , California Reps. John Duarte and Carlos Gimenez said they’d only vote for McCarthy. For McCarthy’s part, he hinted he might be open to returning as Speaker on Monday morning in a complete reversal.
“I think that this is very healthy and constructive for the country, for the Congress, and for the Republican conference,” Good told TAC. “We’re going to have a competition to select a Speaker instead of a coronation.”
The post Grapple for the Gavel 2.0 appeared first on The American Conservative.
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