Connexion
State of the Union: The Republican majority in the House of Representatives continues to wane.
New York’s 3rd Congressional District, previously represented by George Santos, a Republican, has flipped back to Democratic control with Tom Suozzi’s decisive victory over Mazi Pilip.
Suozzi held the same seat from 2017 to 2023, and will now serve the remainder of Santos’s term in the House (which lasts until January 2025).
Pilip, a Nassau County legislator, was born in Ethiopia, emigrated to Israel where she fought in the Israel Defense Forces, and then moved to the United States.
While Pilip campaigned on being a “political outsider,” Suozzi positioned himself as an experienced centrist candidate. A focal point of this special election was illegal immigration, an issue on which Suozzi played up his moderation.
Interestingly enough, although Pilip ran as a Republican candidate, public records show that she has been enrolled as a Democrat since 2012. In a district where Republican voters just were betrayed by their previous representative, another self-proclaimed “outsider,” it is no surprise that Pilip was unable to repeat the electoral upset of 2022.
Republicans currently have a razor-thin majority in the House, 219–212, which has grown ever more tenuous, particularly following the resignations of Reps. Bill Johnson of Ohio and Kevin McCarthy of California.
The post GOP Majority Approaches Knife’s Edge With Special Election Loss appeared first on The American Conservative.
The inside story of how Congress is pursuing endless war in Ukraine—and trying to stop a Trump election.
This weekend, Senate Democrats (joined by a few Republicans, including most Republican leadership) forced through a “security supplemental” that spends close to $100 billion, most of it on Ukraine. It was the culmination of months of secretive negotiations on border security. Those negotiations produced a border security product unacceptable to most Republicans, so then Republicans voted it down, and then an hour later we were debating a security supplemental with border security stripped out.
The quick pivot, refusal to negotiate another round on border security, and immediate shift to blame Trump confirmed one thing: Republican leadership wasn’t serious about border security. They cared most about Ukraine funding and saw the border negotiations as a distraction. This extinguished any hope of real border security before the negotiation began.
The story our leadership tells is that the “politics of border security” had changed because of Donald Trump. James Lankford dutifully negotiated a bipartisan border product. Conservative Republicans encouraged this negotiation. When the product took shape, Donald Trump demanded conservatives walk. Trump argued that Joe Biden didn’t need a border security package—which was true—so Republicans should ask simply that Joe Biden do his job. This intervention allegedly killed a great piece of border policy.
This is a fairytale that makes conservative senators and Donald Trump look bad, perhaps by design. In truth, the demands conservative senators made at the beginning of the negotiation went like this: Joe Biden can fix this problem, but he refuses, so we must make him do his job. This posture came along specific demands from senators ranging from Ukraine aid supporters like Marco Rubio to Ukraine aid skeptics like me, and those in the middle like Ron Johnson. We argued that we could condition further Ukraine aid on decreased illegal border crossings. In other words, Congress would appropriate money to Ukraine in stages: if Biden refused to drive down border crossings, he wouldn’t get his money for Ukraine.
The deal, as envisioned by conservatives, was apparently never on the table. According to both Democratic colleagues and some Republicans, this is because Republican leadership—specifically Mitch McConnell—refused to push the Democrats on this issue. Other Republicans have argued instead that even if Mitch McConnell empowered Lankford to make this demand, Democrats would have never agreed.
Obviously, this latter view reflects more favorably on Mitch McConnell, but only by a little, because it suggests a massive asymmetry in negotiating leverage. If Democrats are desperate for Ukraine aid, and Republicans—at least the negotiating Republicans—are also desperate for Ukraine aid, border security would inevitably land on the chopping block.
Did Trump oppose a deal? He certainly opposed the deal that was on the table. It would have done little to secure the border in the future, would have been a massive political gift to the Democrats, and would constrain Trump’s border enforcement if he was ever elected president. This last point deserves extra emphasis: these bipartisan deals always seem to contain provisions that would put the next president, whoever that is, in a box.
Given its substance, it is hardly surprising that he opposed the deal, but most Republicans opposed the deal well before he weighed in—publicly or privately. In fact, the only conversation I had with Donald Trump about the border deal was a day after the text came out, well after I had opposed the bill’s headline provisions. “Why do you guys want to give these people such a gift? It’s stupid.” It was an accurate point, but it didn’t change anyone’s mind because most of us already agreed with the former president.
So the deal fell apart, and the way it fell apart was the height of political malpractice. The text—370 pages of it—dropped late Sunday, February 4. We had a Republican conference meeting on Monday, well before anyone had time to digest major provisions. McConnell left the meeting and praised the bill but criticized the changing political dynamics. He blamed Donald Trump. He blamed the House of Representatives.
It’s hard to imagine a more damaging political message: Hey everyone, we’ve got great bipartisan policy, but we’re going to kill it because the knuckle draggers don’t like it. It was a gift to Democrats and everyone knew it. Senate candidates across the country, many of whom are allies of Mitch McConnell, called me to complain bitterly of the predicament created by leadership in Washington.
Normally, spending bills go through months of review, committee markups, and hours of debate. The text of the Ukraine supplemental was distributed to Hill staff on Wednesday, February 7, and the first procedural vote was taken less than a day later. On February 5, many senators had emphasized the importance of doing something on the border before action was taken on Ukraine. Two days later, at least some of them had decided that fighting for border security for an hour had checked the box, and they were ready to move on to their real priority: funding for Ukraine. The bill will pass, albeit by a tiny margin, with a majority of Republicans opposing the bait and switch.
This current episode is finished, at least in the senate, but there will be many reruns. The form of this debacle will replay itself, to the great detriment of Donald Trump and other Republican candidates. Three facts are important. First, voters range from ambivalent to outright hostile of further Ukraine aid. Second, a subset of Republican senators are obsessed with Ukraine aid, caring about this issue more than any other. Third, a majority of House Republicans oppose further Ukraine aid, and demand strong border security measures regardless of the details of a Ukraine package.
It’s easy to sketch out how these facts will manifest themselves in our political reality. The senate Ukraine bill goes to the House, where leadership there cannot bring it up to the floor without endangering House Speaker Mike Johnson. So the House will either refuse to vote on the Ukraine bill, or will attach a strong border security bill (like HR2) and then send it back to the Senate. In public and private, Senate Republican leadership will undermine the House leadership and the Republican presidential nominee.
Democrats could try to force House leadership to bring up Ukraine aid with a discharge petition, an approach that would hand control of the House floor over to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries with the aid of a few House Republicans. Speaker Johnson could fight this maneuver aggressively. If he does, he will be attacked by Senate Republican leaders, at least privately, and will face another negative news cycle. If he doesn’t, his own conference will turn against him. The cycle will replay over the government funding deadline in March. It will replay over the omnibus debate that follows. It will replay any time the U.S. Congress must actually do something.
Whatever shape this takes, the basic game will be the same. The media, obsessed with any story that makes Trump look bad, will blame him and “MAGA Republicans” in the House. They will blame Trump for the chaos. They will blame Trump for “extremism.” They will refuse to report on Biden’s failings and instead focus on internal Republican division. They will point to Republican senators attacking Donald Trump and House Republicans, just as they have over the last week. Democrats will run advertisements: “See, even Mitch McConnell thinks Trump is being ridiculous.” And they will rinse and repeat this narrative all the way to the November election.
This is how you save Joe Biden’s presidency: By taking the chaos of Joe Biden’s tenure and making it about Republican chaos being even worse. By taking the extremism of Democrats and making it all about the crazy right-wingers in the House and Mar-a-Lago.
To be clear, this doesn’t assume malice. The Republican establishment of Washington is so obsessively committed to Ukraine that they will use every tool at their disposal to apply pressure to other Republicans to write that big Ukraine check. The problem is that every time they apply pressure, they create an opening for Democrats and the media to tank our nominee.
For months, I have been confident that Donald Trump would be reelected as president. But this is how you snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Republican establishment is going to war for more Ukraine money. They don’t care if a second Trump term is collateral damage.
But, of course, they have an insurance plan even if Trump pulls it off. Though few have noticed, buried in the bill’s text is a kill switch for the next Trump presidency. The legislation explicitly requires funding for Ukraine well into the next presidential term. The Washington Post has already reported this provision was added to control Donald Trump.
It gets worse. Back in 2019, Democrats articulated a novel theory of impeachment, based on Trump’s refusal to spend money from the USAI—Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Five years after impeaching Trump for refusing to spend money on Ukraine, they have drafted a new law that again requires Trump to spend money on Ukraine. If he negotiates an end to the war, as he has promised to do, they will undoubtedly argue that he has broken the law. We are nearly a year away from an election that could give Trump the presidency, and Ukraine-obsessive Republicans have already given the Democrats a predicate to impeach him.
Slava Ukraini, America be damned.
The post The Republican Plot Against Donald Trump appeared first on The American Conservative.
State of the Union: Yet another continuing resolution was passed late this week.
The United States government will not enter a partial shutdown come midnight tonight. (That is, unless some March for Lifers decide to do something drastic—the government has shut down for a whole lot less than the slaughter of millions of unborn babies.)
On Thursday, Congress sent a continuing resolution that will keep the government open at least until March to President Joe Biden’s desk. The legislation first passed in the Senate 77–18. Hours later in the House, the vote was 314–108. Of the 108 objectors, 106 were Republicans and just two were Democrats. To pass the legislation, leadership suspended the rules, which increased the threshold to pass the legislation to a two-thirds majority, but almost completely eliminated the deliberative aspects of the legislative process.
The continuing resolution that extends last fiscal year’s funding levels has a rolling expiration date. The government agencies that would have shut down at the end of Friday received funding until March 1. Other government agencies will be funded through March 8.
Some conservatives in Congress did not mince words about Republican leadership’s handling of these negotiations.
“It’s a loss for the American people to join hands with Democrats, form a governing coalition to do what Schumer and the Senate want to do,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good told members of the media on Thursday.
“The CR that was passed tonight by the Uniparty is a perfect example of how we arrived at $34 trillion of debt,” tweeted Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona. “It’s especially rich that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle advocated for passage for the sake of Ukraine…all while our border is left wide open.”
“The Law Firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson, and Jeffries (‘The Firm™️’) prefers to fund the entire federal government with just a single vote — no amendments, no real debate, just an empty, reflexive regurgitation of the words ‘at least we didn’t cause a shutdown,’” tweeted Senator Mike Lee of Utah. “Whether through a ‘continuing resolution’ (which keeps government funded at current levels) or an ‘omnibus’ (which funds everything in the government at newly established levels, but in a single spending bill), these one-and-done solutions nearly always escape meaningful debate or modification on the House or Senate floor.”
Nevertheless, other staunch conservatives are giving Speaker Johnson a pass.
“He’s just playing the cards he’s dealt,” Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee said.
“It doesn’t really upset me anymore. It’s just reality,” Burchett added. “Johnson didn’t create this problem.”
Given the Republican-controlled House previously removed former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over his inability to win shutdown negotiations and cut government spending, the new House Speaker Mike Johnson is already feeling the pressure from his right flank. Like McCarthy before him, Johnson had to rely mostly on Democratic votes to get the latest continuing resolution out of the House. Yet with razor-thin margins in the House, any move against Johnson is riskier than the right’s previous move against McCarthy. Nevertheless, rumors of a motion to vacate are always percolating on Capitol Hill.
The post Is the Right Going to Revolt Against Mike Johnson? appeared first on The American Conservative.
The White House’s policy toward Venezuela completely misunderstands conditions on the ground.
In late October 2023, the Venezuelan opposition and the regime agreed to what in paper seemed a reasonable pact: The U.S. would lift some sanctions against the dictatorship, while the regime conceded guarantees for greater electoral freedoms in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections.
President Biden had already lifted some sanctions in November 2022 to the Venezuelan regime’s oil and mining industry due to its alleged commitments to a free and fair election. While this is not the first time the U.S. has agreed to lift sanctions against Maduro, the Biden administration expected that Maduro would meet his part of the agreement for the first time.
Unsurprisingly, this did not happen.
Fast forward to two months after the agreement. The U.S. released Alex Saab, a businessman accused of laundering money for a large Venezuela-led drug trafficking operation, to get Maduro to comply with a small part of the deal: releasing political prisoners, including a group of Americans jailed in Venezuela.
The U.S. had said they would go bring the sanctions back if Maduro did not follow suit on his part of the deal—but it seems those threats were absolutely toothless. Maduro instead has since provoked Guyana, the country’s eastern neighbor, over the disputed region of Esequibo; he is prosecuting key allies of María Corina Machado, the opposition alliance’s presidential candidate. These parallel developments illustrate the shortsightedness of American policy in the country.
Since the agreement was signed, one of the organizers of the opposition primary in October was detained in early December after the regime’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, announced arrest warrants against 14 individuals for allegedly sabotaging a referendum on the Esequibo. The referendum had been called by Maduro to ask voters what steps to take regarding the claim over said region.
Another significant factor is that the U.S. simply misunderstands the Venezuelan position on the Esequibo. Statements in the American media and coming from American officials suggest that the Esequibo claim is merely a tantrum thrown by Maduro to take 70% of a smaller country for oil.
Nothing is farther from the truth.
Pretty much everyone in Venezuela—rich or poor, left-wing or right-wing—believes the Esequibo is Venezuelan. Not supporting claims to it would mean the end of the career for any Venezuelan politician, whether in the government or in the opposition.
Any American map depicts a Venezuelan territory that looks like a one-legged animal. In Venezuela, the map shows two legs, the second being the Esequibo, which appears as a crossed-out area that says “zona en reclamación” (zone in reclamation). That’s the Venezuelan map taught in all Venezuelan schools; it long predates the socialist dictatorship that today rules the country.
The Esequibo region was part of the Spanish Empire under the Captaincy General of Venezuela, but it never had permanent Spanish settlers. Beginning in 1814, the United Kingdom sent settlers to the region, a practice that continued for decades, despite constant Venezuelan reclamations against the U.K. starting in 1822.
Eventually, in 1899, the countries convened to go to an arbitral tribunal, where Venezuela was represented by the U.S. Venezuela was hesitant to engage in such a tribunal, but the U.S.—which considered the British settlements a colonial pursuit and invoked the Monroe Doctrine in response—pressured Venezuela for such an agreement.
The tribunal would rule in favor of the British. Venezuela initially abided by the ruling, but almost 50 years later, proof of collusion between British and Russian judges in the arbitral tribunal was found. This led Venezuela to reassert its claims, a position that has not changed since.
Maduro has raised the tension again by calling for the referendum in December asking the Venezuelan people what to do with the Esequibo region. Proposed measures included creating a state of Guayana Esequiba and giving Venezuelan nationality to those in the region who want it. Maduro reached an agreement on December 15 with the Guyanese government in which the parties agreed not to use force to resolve the dispute, only to announce a military deployment on the Venezuelan side of the border 12 days later.
There are differences of opinion in Venezuela with regards to what to do with the Esequibo—some justify any measure, even war, to retake it. Others want to pursue diplomatic means. Some believe it’s irrecuperable. But, virtually everyone in Venezuela believes the Esequibo is Venezuelan.
So, when Brian Nichols, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, says that the U.S. supports “the sovereign right of Guyana to develop its own natural resources” and that “efforts to infringe Guyana’s sovereignty are unacceptable,” in Venezuela, this is read as an attack on Venezuela, not on Maduro.
In short, by trying to court Maduro with the lifting of sanctions, the U.S. is not winning Maduro, but rather emboldening him in his geopolitical pretensions; by criticizing those Venezuelan pretensions, the U.S. is also losing the opposition.
Not that the U.S. was doing much to win the hearts of the opposition. The October agreement between the government and the opposition, included an unspecified mechanism by which opposition candidates that were disallowed from running for political office could ask for the review of their bans. The most significant opposition politician banned from running is María Corina Machado, a center-right outsider who won the primary election in October.
Machado, however, originally said she would not go to the country’s supreme court to ask for her ban to be reviewed. Then, on the last day of the term to review the bans, the American diplomatic mission for Venezuela congratulated Machado on X for going to the court to review her ban—before she announced she went to the court for the review.
This, of course, made Machado look like an American puppet, drawing criticism from both her supporters and detractors and further polarizing the opposition, which had begrudgingly accepted her lead after having sidelined her for years, considering her too radical in her approach against Maduro.
Biden’s Venezuela policy has been marked by its inconsistency and its weakness. He has tried to play nice with Maduro—further stabilizing him and emboldening him without bringing him closer to the U.S. or away from Chinese and Russian influence.
It’s clear that Biden’s goal in Venezuela is not restoring democracy, and this is not a criticism. Time and time again, the U.S. has shown its inadequacy in bringing democracy to other countries. His goal seems to be even more unrealistic: turning Venezuela into a reliable ally.
Venezuela is not, and will never be, an American ally. It is unlikely even to reliably cooperate with America’s material interests.
One example will illustrate the absurdity of the idea. Until 2019, Venezuela owed China over $54 billion, which is almost half of the total amount China has loaned to Latin American countries. To pay for it, Venezuela has mortgaged part of its mining and oil industry to China.
This is only one facet of the story—the Venezuelan links with China, Russia, and Iran are simply too great to ignore. They’re economic, ideological, and geopolitical.
While American presidents think in terms, a Venezuelan dictator thinks of a lifetime. Maduro very well knows that Biden might be out of the White House by 2025 or, at the latest, 2029, when Maduro will only be 66. Russia, China, and Iran are simply steadier partners for him.
Moreover, if the Biden administration’s goal is simply courting Venezuela for its oil by allowing Chevron to operate in Venezuela (the focus of the lift of the 2022 sanctions, and part of the recent lift), it might receive a surprise: On December 5, Maduro proposed a law to ban oil companies to operate in Venezuela if they operate Guyanese oil concessions in the Esequibo, the territory under dispute.
This would put Chevron in a difficult situation. It recently acquired Hess Corp., which owns 30 percent of the exploitation rights of the Stabroek Block, located in waters under dispute near the coast of Guyana.
Thus, if Chevron does explore or exploit oil in the region, it may mean that they are not allowed to do so in Venezuela, after four long years of lobbying for the end of sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and the decades of turbulence since Hugo Chávez’s rise to power in 1999.
Time and time again, the Biden administration has said that lifting sanctions was subject to concrete steps in allowing free and fair elections in Venezuela and more political liberties in the country. Time and time again, Maduro has shown he will not concede any of that. Yet sanctions didn’t come back.
Biden is neither feared nor respected by Maduro, who knows that enough pressure will make the Biden administration yield. By keeping up such pressure, with more political prisoners or a more aggressive rhetoric against Guyana long enough, Biden will lift more sanctions until he simply has no leverage against Maduro. The dictator has fooled the president again.
The post Maduro Fools Biden Again appeared first on The American Conservative.
Louisiana’s Mike Johnson doesn’t seem like a radical, but perhaps he holds unguessed depths.
“It was worth it.”
So says Matt Gaetz of his move against Kevin McCarthy, 22 days and four GOP nominees later. It is hard to dispute. McCarthy was not a conservative, nor did he have the pragmatic bona fides of an operator like Mitch McConnell, whose brainless and soulless personal views are at least balanced out by an ability to get things done. That McCarthy was ever elected speaker of the House to begin with is a ringing indictment of the Republican Party’s Washington establishment.
That offense has been corrected now. McCarthy lost the gavel, and none of the worst-case scenarios materialized. No liberal Republican, no Respectable Moderate, no rabid war hawk or corporate crony managed to weasel his way into the job. The ostentatiously unimpressive Patrick McHenry, a McCarthy ally made speaker pro tempore upon his ouster, did not get a chance to make his Hail Mary play. The long-shot possibility that a faction of dissatisfied Republicans would break off to elect a compromise candidate with the Democrat minority came and went, barely a flash in the pan.
Mike Johnson’s ascension seems a shining example of the Buckley Rule in action. The man who came closest to the gavel before him was Jim Jordan, who fell short first by 17, then by 18, then by 23 votes before his colleagues sent him packing by way of a secret ballot. To a number of intraparty holdouts—not to mention opponents across the aisle—Jordan was an unacceptable option. Yet wherever the two men differ on politics, Johnson is to Jordan’s right, and the objectors gave way for the former but not the latter. Maybe it is simple presentation. Johnson is mild-mannered, a Southern gentleman without a drawl, buttoned-down and bespectacled without projecting McHenry’s weakness. Jordan revels in his brash populist image—his signature look: jacket off, cuffs rolled, tie loosened—and carries himself through the House of Representatives like a wrestling champ with a chip on his shoulder.
Still, the staid new speaker has his detractors. The emerging narrative among left-wing activists in the so-called “mainstream” media is that Johnson is a proponent, an ally, or a sympathizer of “Christian nationalism.” As of this writing, fretful articles to that effect have already run in Time, Newsweek, Politico, MSNBC, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the Associated Press—the list goes on. (If nothing else, it is remarkable how quickly a propaganda network can get its ducks in a row.)
Definitions may be important here. Insofar as “Christian nationalism” means the belief that nations should be Christian, this is a bare minimum for sound politics. Insofar as it means a Christianized revision of the anti-universalism of early modern political theology, it is a philosophical question that even the speaker of the House is not likely to drag from the online journals into the realm of actual statecraft. Far more likely is that opinion-makers use the term simply to gesture at religious reaction, to raise a specter that looks vaguely like The Handmaid’s Tale but that contains neither a roadmap nor a substantive philosophy. I would be surprised to learn that Johnson is part of any revolutionary vanguard.
In fact, much of the evidence presented to this end suggests the opposite conclusion to more serious observers. In his first speech as the leader of the chamber, Johnson quoted G.K. Chesterton’s profound misunderstanding that “America is the only nation in the world that is founded upon a creed”—one “set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.”
The speaker did not continue to the rest of Chesterton’s thought:
Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.
To cite without the obvious qualifications the gravest of liberal errors—the primacy of The American Idea—is not exactly the stuff of hard-right ambition. It is an important reminder of Johnson’s actual politics, which are essentially the consensus politics of the Republican Party circa 2004. Johnson is as hardline as they come on the red-meat social issues. He has also stated publicly that his “number one priority” is making cuts to Social Security and Medicare. He has stayed dangerously silent on much of foreign policy—recall the George Bush of 1999—but is already making gestures toward more funding for Ukraine. He is better than a mile by Kevin McCarthy. But he hardly seems the reactionary avatar of TAC dreams and AP nightmares.
What do the progressives hyperventilating about Johnson’s radical philosophy really fear? That he will manage to act on his common-sense belief that America is daily betraying its Christian heritage, and that in so doing it invites chaos now and judgment in the days to come? That five years hence, American children will be praying to the Lord each morning in schools across the country; that marriage will be restored in law to the concept required not just by Scripture but by bedrock mental function; that the industrial slaughter of innocents will become first illegal, then impracticable, and then unthinkable; that the regular conduct of unjust wars will be left behind by the greatest Christian power this world has seen since the fall of Rome—that disaster will be averted though the hour is very late?
I would be surprised, but I have been surprised before.
The post Speaker of Surprises? appeared first on The American Conservative.
State of the Union: A poll provided to The American Conservative that is circulating in powerful circles from D.C. to Mar-a-Lago shows that voters think Congressman Blake Masters has a nice ring to it.
There have been rumors that Blake Masters has been gearing up for another Senate run in 2024 after falling just short in 2022, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell abandoned support of Masters’ campaign in the final 90 days. But what about Representative Blake Masters? Arizona voters think it’s got a nice ring to it, according to a new poll.
A poll conducted by Data Orbital and provided to The American Conservative shows that Masters would enter the race as the clear favorite if he mounted a run.
Arizona’s 8th Congressional district south west of Phoenix is Trump country. The former president maintains an overwhelming net favorability of +54.7 percent in Arizona’s 8th, according to the poll, and the Cook PVI lists the district as R+10. Data Orbital’s poll found that Masters also enjoys “near ubiquitous name ID” at 92.7 percent and a high net-favorability rating of +26 percent.
Meanwhile, Masters’ would-be primary opponent, Abe Hamadeh, has a massive name ID problem. Despite Hamadeh running a state-wide campaign in 2022 for attorney general, “A full third of GOP primary voters have never heard of him” and “more than half have no opinion of him.” That much is reflected in the fundraising data from Masters and Hamadeh’s previous runs. While Masters raised over $4 million in his Senate primary campaign, over $1 million per quarter, and raised about $12 million total over the course of his campaign, Hamadeh’s primary campaign raised just over half a million dollars and was kept afloat by a series of family loans.
Head-to-head against Hamadeh, Masters leads by double digits, poll data showed. Masters polled at 39.4 percent to Hamadeh’s 27.2 percent.
In a multi-candidate primary between Masters, Hamadeh, and two other candidates who could enter the contest, state Representative Ben Toma and state Senator Anthony Kern, the poll showed Masters had a nearly 15 point lead. Masters polled at 33.2 percent, Hamadeh at 18.4 percent, Toma at 6.8 percent, and Kern at 5.5 percent. Another 31.5 percent of voters were undecided and 4.6 percent refused to answer the question.
If he runs, Masters would be filling the open seat left by Rep. Debbie Lesko. The three-term congresswoman announced amidst House Republicans’ search for a new Speaker of the House that she would not be seeking re-election in 2024. “It has been a great honor to serve the people of Arizona’s 8th Congressional District in Congress, however, I have decided not to run for reelection in 2024. I want to spend more time with my husband, my 94-year-old mother, my three children, and my five grandchildren,” Lesko said in an October 17 release.
Masters would also be viewed as the most conservative candidate who could replace the outgoing congresswoman, according to the poll. Nearly 60 percent of respondents identified Masters as conservative, whereas 41.6 percent considered Hamadeh conservative.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Arizona Voters Want Congressman Blake Masters appeared first on The American Conservative.
Mike Johnson was elected the 56th Speaker of the House on Wednesday. It was worth the wait.
Tom Emmer stormed out of the still ongoing GOP conference meeting in a huff. Just hours prior, the Minnesotan Congressman had been named speaker-designate by his House Republican colleagues.
“[Emmer] just …… left. Said nothing,” tweeted Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News. Minutes later, news broke that Emmer had pulled his nomination to become the next Speaker of the House. He had prevailed over eight other candidates who vied for the conference’s nomination.
In the first ballot, Emmer received 78 votes, followed by Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the Republican conference vice chair, with 34, then Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida with 29, and Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma with 27. Emmer’s total climbed to 90 with the second ballot, with Johnson, Donalds, and Hern trailing in the same order but by a larger margin than the first. Emmer could taste victory on the third ballot when he hit 100 votes, then 107 votes on the fourth. Johnson was still 51 votes behind, but conservative votes, then split between Johnson, Donalds, and Hern, would be enough to make it competitive if channeled to a single candidate. On the final ballot, that candidate was Johnson, but Johnson fell 20 short of Emmer, who procured the nomination with 117 votes.
Though Emmer received the nomination, he performed worse in conference than Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio did the week prior. A roll call vote was necessary for Emmer to see how much work he had left to do to reach 217. The result was bad news for the Minnesotan: Twenty-six House Republicans said they said vote for another candidate on the House floor, which is one more than the number Jordan received on the final vote for his speaker bid.
Emmer sought to meet with his detractors and the House Republican conference would reconvene later that afternoon to determine if Emmer would take the fight to the floor. But Emmer’s conservative detractors would not budge, objecting to Emmer’s votes in favor of gay marriage, transgender soldiers, higher rates of immigration, the debt ceiling deal, and the September continuing resolution. Rep. Rick Allen of Georgia, for example, reportedly told Emmer that he didn’t need to get right with him but to “get right with Jesus” for supporting the Respect for Marriage Act.
At the time, a GOP aide told The American Conservative that if Emmer’s bid managed to make it to the floor, a cohort of conservatives were prepared to obstruct his efforts. As Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana told CNN’s Manu Raju, “I’m a conservative. I came to Washington to fight for conservative values. I can’t go along with putting one of the most moderate members of the entire Republican conference in the speaker’s chair.”
Former President Donald Trump, who initially seemed ambivalent to Emmer’s bid (and for Emmer’s part, he really tried to play up his relationship with the president), provided cover for the conservatives seeking to prevent Emmer from obtaining the gavel. “I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors. RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “He never respected the Power of a Trump Endorsement, or the breadth and scope of MAGA—MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Just a half-hour after the conference meeting began at 4 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, Emmer was out.
Republicans regrouped. Candidates had until 5:30 p.m. to declare their candidacy, and at 6 p.m., the conference would host another candidate forum. Six candidates declared: Johnson, Donalds, Hern, Reps. Chuck Fleischman and Mark Green of Tennessee, and Rep. Roger Williams of Texas. Before the conference was scheduled to vote, Hern dropped out and endorsed Johnson, narrowing the field to five. After three rounds of voting, Johnson had secured the nomination. That was the easy part, however: Johnson needed to see in a roll-call vote if he’d have enough support on the House floor. No members objected; only three members, Reps. Thomas Massie, Mark Amodei and French Hill, voted present; but 19 others were absent from the vote.
“Democracy is messy sometimes, but it is our system. This conference that you see, this House Republican majority is united,” Johnson said at a press conference surrounded by the House Republican caucus Tuesday night. “This is servant leadership. We’re going to serve the people of this country. We’re going to restore their faith in this Congress, this institution of government. America is the last, best hope of man on the earth. Abraham Lincoln said it, Ronald Reagan used to remind us all the time, and we’re here to remind you of that again. We’re going to restore your trust in what we do here.”
“Thank you for allowing us to go through the process,” Johnson added. “It was worth it.”
Overnight, Johnson was able to flip Massie and shore up the support needed. With a few absences, Johnson needed 215 votes to become the next Speaker of the House. The final tally was 220 for Johnson, 209 for Jeffries, zero others, zero present. He received every Republican vote in attendance, making him the first speaker to be voted in with unanimous support since John Boehner in 2011.
Johnson, a constitutional lawyer by training who represents a largely-rural district in western Louisiana, will undergo quite a large change in the next few days. He’ll be staffing up and moving some of his work space from the small vice conference chair office to the Speaker’s suite in the heart of the U.S. Capitol.
And he plans on hitting the ground running “to ensure the Senate cannot jam the House with a Christmas omnibus,” Johnson wrote in a letter to House colleagues. Johnson knows the clock is ticking on the continuing resolution scheduled to expire on November 17. This week, he wants the House to tackle the Energy and Water appropriations bill, and next week, address appropriations for the legislative branch, the interior and environment, and THUD.
Johnson’s voting record is strongly conservative. Whereas Emmer voted in favor of gay marriage, the continuing resolution, and more aid to Ukraine, Johnson voted against. He’s not a Republican that agrees with the party on markets and merely tolerates social conservative members of the party: he’s one of them. As Johnson wrote in a document called “7 Core Principles of Conservatism,” “A just government protects life, honors marriage and family as the primary institutions of a healthy society, and embraces the vital cultural influences of religion and morality.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, quoting Johnson, put it simply in a tweet: “It was worth it.”
The post Chaotic Good appeared first on The American Conservative.
State of the Union: House Republicans uncover a check written by Jim Biden for his brother Joe that totals $200,000—dated the same day Jim received a transfer of the same amount from a now-bankrupt health care company.
“Where’s the money?” President Joe Biden quipped in June as the House Oversight Committee investigated claims from an FBI whistleblower who accused Biden of being involved in a $5 million bribery scheme, exchanging pelf for policy with foreign nationals. “It’s a bunch of malarkey,” Biden said, laughing off his accusers.
Unfortunately for the president, it looks like Republicans might have just found some Biden bucks. On Friday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer announced that bank records provided to the committee under a subpoena revealed the president’s brother Jim Biden wrote a check for $200,000 to his brother Joe.
Such great generosity from a narcissistic slime ball like Jim is suspicious enough, but Jim was just the money-laundering middleman. Jim’s check to Joe was written on March 1, 2018, the same day that Americore, a failing health care company, wired the same amount of money to Jim and his wife Sara’s shared bank account.
Grant White, the former CEO of Americore, has previously claimed that Jim and his hedge-fund partners, “became enamored of Americore’s business model and approached White about investing in the company.” Soonthereafter, White claims, the parties “agreed to enter into business together on the promise that Biden and his partners would be able to deliver upwards of $30 million to invest in Americore.”
Jim promised White that “there’s not a single door in the country that we can’t open.” The reason for that, Jim said according to White, is that the president’s brother “always represented himself as the fundraiser for his brother’s campaigns.”
White has also previously claimed that in 2018, Jim needed money to fix up a Florida property he owned and pay a loan he took out for it. Americore was also in need of cash and was seeking to secure a short-term loan at the time.
White claims that Jim, “made some phone calls and he basically agreed to get $2 million,” and would use his hedge fund to provide White the money. White adds, however, that, after Jim secured the money, Jim had White loan him “approximately $400,000” to use for the Florida property, and later asked for another $200,000. Jim assured White he’d repay the loans after he received a “multi-million investment coming from overseas,” which Jim added was “imminent and certain,” per White. The money never came, and the loans never got repaid.
Americore filed for bankruptcy on December 31, 2019. Case files from Americore’s bankruptcy case add veracity to White’s claims. In July 2022, the trustee overseeing Americore’s bankruptcy lodged a complaint against Jim Biden in an attempt to recover the loaned $600,000 plus interest, which the trustee described as “fraudulent transfer and for turnover.”
In the complaint, the trustee claims Biden received two transfers. The first, $400,000 to Jim’s PNC checking account on January 12, 2018; the second, a $200,000 transfer dated March 1, 2018. Jim Biden later settled with the bankruptcy trustee for a sum of $350,000.
But what’s $350,000 when “there’s not a single door in the country” you can’t open—including the door to the Oval Office. And when your brother is the current occupant who has bent the justice system of the United States to his will, what do either of you have to fear? Maybe their youngest brother Frank Biden, recently in the news because illicit photos of himself were leaked from a gay-hookup site, but certainly not House Republicans.
The post The Big Guy’s Cut 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.
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.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s short-term solution to avoid a shutdown is on life support.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is still working to find a solution to fund the government that the Republican-controlled House can agree on before funding runs out on September 30.
The Republican caucus in the House is divided between hardline conservatives, mostly associated with the House Freedom Caucus, and the rank and file. After announcing the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden early last week—a move that has been perceived as a concession to the conservative cohort—the California Republican and GOP leadership are whipping for a plan brokered over the last few days to fund the government through October 31.
The proposal was negotiated between some members of House Freedom Caucus leadership and members of the moderate Main Street Caucus with McCarthy and GOP leadership oversight. The plan includes cuts to domestic spending bills that amount to around 8 percent. Defense spending, veterans benefits, and disaster aid funding remain exempt from these cuts, however.
To meet one of the House Freedom Caucus’ central demands, the short-term funding proposal includes most of what is found in H.R. 2, also known as the Secure the Border Act. What’s missing from H.R. 2 in the potential funding deal, however, is making e-verify mandatory, which reveals just how sorry the state of affairs are in the Republican Party. The GOP screams about Biden’s border disaster, but get squeamish when conservatives suggest illegal immigrants shouldn’t be receiving a paycheck if they don’t have papers.
In exchange for the aforementioned cuts and increased border security, the proposed deal opens up the possibility of Republicans passing a defense spending bill for the upcoming fiscal year. So far, conservative members have prevented a defense appropriations bill from going forward. And they might continue to do so, depending on how hawkish (particularly with respect to the war in Ukraine) the neoconservative and liberal Republicans make the upcoming defense spending bill. What is not included in the short-term funding bill: Biden’s requested $40 billion more in supplemental funding for the war in Ukraine and natural disasters—something Senate leadership in both parties have demanded be in a short-term funding solution.
During a private call Sunday night, the GOP’s House leadership told caucus members it hopes to bring the defense spending bill to a vote on Wednesday, then vote on the bill to fund the government through October 31 on Thursday.
Soon after more details of the proposed deal emerged, however, House conservatives were making their displeasure known. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said he “will not support this 167 page surrender to Joe Biden;” Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana said the deal was a “continuation of Nancy Pelosi’s budget and Joe Biden’s policies;” North Carolina’s Rep. Dan Bishop tweeted, “No CR. Pass the damn approps bills. Roll back the crazy bureaucracy to pre-COVID levels. Now.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made it simple: “I’m a NO.” And Arizona’s Rep. Eli Crane’s position was simpler still: “NO.” Bishop quote-tweeted Crane saying it was a “one-word winning argument.”
Beyond the aforementioned, the full list of Republican members who are voting no or leaning no includes Reps. Andy Biggs, Ken Buck, Tim Burchett, Tony Gonzales, Anna Paulina Luna, Ralph Norman, Andy Ogles, and Victoria Spartz.
It’s tough sledding for McCarthy. The Speaker brought in Pennsylvania’s Rep. Scott Perry, the Freedom Caucus Chair, to negotiate the deal, only for McCarthy and Perry to see members affiliated with the Freedom Caucus reject the deal instantaneously. On Monday, McCarthy rhetorically asked CNN, “Have they read it?”
“One thing I always know, sometimes they haven’t read all the way through it,” McCarthy continued. “Let’s let them understand what it is and see where they are.”
The number of objectors to the short-term funding deal makes the math incredibly difficult for McCarthy. Because Republicans have such a slim majority, McCarthy can only afford four defections in the Republican caucus if he hopes to pass the deal through the House, assuming all Democrats vote no (an incredibly safe bet).
Things get even more difficult when potential GOP absences are taken into account. Rep. Chris Stewart effectively resigned his seat Friday due to his wife’s health concerns, Rep. Frank Lucas is still recovering from surgery, and Rep. Dan Crenshaw is awaiting his newborn. As for the GOP conservatives, Luna is on maternity leave.
Despite the math, McCarthy isn’t ready to abandon the short-term funding deal just yet: “It’s a good thing I love a challenge, because every day will be a challenge. We’re not on September 30th yet,” McCarthy reportedly said. But it’s coming more quickly than McCarthy might have hoped.
The post Deal or No Deal: Continuing Resolution Edition appeared first on The American Conservative.
It isn’t clear that the political payoff for impeaching Biden balances the lost opportunities for real legislative progress.
Back in March, we ran an insightful piece from R. Jordan Prescott to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Lewinsky scandal. Building on an earlier column about the general inefficacy of Congressional investigations, Prescott observed that the Republican Congress’s impeachment of President Bill Clinton traded substantive legislative progress—in particular, Social Security reform—for political gains that proved to be very short-lived.
With House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Tuesday announcement that the lower chamber is opening an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden for shady business dealings, you’ve got to wonder if it is happening again. There are plenty of curious episodes and details in the Biden family’s doings that merit an explanation to the American people; yet setting the machinery of impeachment in motion ensures that legislative priorities will be shelved to secure, in the best case scenario, an indictment that will be dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
McCarthy, a California Republican, is no dummy. Coverage of his announcement has focused on his efforts to consolidate control over his own caucus, which has taken on a threatening aspect over budget negotiations. A cannier eye would see something else: He is ensuring that 2020’s suppression of the Biden family’s malfeasance in the mainstream press is not repeated. There is no way for the media to avoid covering impeachment proceedings.
The question is whether it’s worth it. The three already ongoing Congressional investigations, along with the Department of Justice investigation of Hunter Biden, ensure that the questions aren’t going anywhere. An impeachment guarantees top billing for whatever comes to light, but the cordon sanitaire has already been breached. Even the New York Times has noticed there’s something up in the House of Biden. Meanwhile, there are a number of points on which Congress could make progress despite the divided government.
For the first time in years, the public’s attention has been captured by our already massive and ever growing federal debt. The New York Times editorial board has sounded the alarm. The Atlantic is contemplating grim facts: “It turns out that the debt matters after all.” 57 percent of the American public think deficit reduction should be a top priority—a 12 percent leap over the prior year’s numbers. The likelihood of another Fed rate increase before the year’s end promises to keep the issue at the public’s front of mind. The GOP is in the rare position where a program of spending cuts would be a political winner. Set against a coherent and disciplined message of fiscal discipline—admittedly a tall order for a persistently chaotic and self-devouring party—even a government shutdown could prove to be only a temporary political setback, provided it secures real budgetary concessions.
Similarly, for the first time in a generation, there is an appetite for trimming the overgrowth of executive war powers. This March, on broadly bipartisan lines, the Senate ended the authorizations passed in 1991 and 2002 for the American operations in Iraq. There is bipartisan legislative momentum in both chambers for further rollbacks of the presidential powers granted during the Global War on Terror. We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for undoing the first branch’s sweeping abdication of its constitutional responsibilities—a cause that not only is a political winner, but also happens to be the right thing to do. A related initiative that could be tied to this renewed sense of legislative responsibility is the establishment of a special inspector general for American efforts supporting Ukraine.
Despite particular differences, both the White House and the GOP are committed to the protection and revival of American industry. Bipartisan efforts like the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS Act have proven that substantive action on industrial policy is not impossible in this divided government. Despite my own reservations about some of these programs, it is clear that Congress has the will to repair some thirty years of disastrous management of our industrial base and our trade policy.
These are all preeminent concerns for the party and for the nation. Any progress on these fronts will come to a halt if the House moves forward with an impeachment.
There are two reasons for this. First, in the modern era, an impeached president’s party closes ranks, and there is no reason to think this time will be different. The unpleasant truth is that the GOP cannot do anything on its own when it controls only the House. Second—an often elided point—is the fact that running an impeachment is resource-intensive. Each House member has a limited amount of staff and time. An impeachment will effectively halt any work on the business of writing, refining, and whipping legislation. Even assuming the Democrats were not to become purely obstructionist, it seems unlikely that the House will have the wherewithal to move anything along.
Impeachment is distinct from a censure; it demands more of the legislature, and potentially has, at least on paper, more significant consequences. Perhaps Biden should be impeached and removed, but, barring some bizarre reconfiguration of the Senate, this is an impossibility. Justice is, in this case, the slave of expediency. McCarthy’s gamble makes a certain amount of political sense, but it is far from clear whether the payout will be worth the costs.
The post Is Impeachment Worth It? appeared first on The American Conservative.
As a government shutdown deadline nears, Republican infighting continues.
The dog days of summer are coming to an end, as is Congress’s August recess. September ushers in the fall, and with it, this year, the potential for a government shutdown.
Washington will have a matter of days to shake off its summer lethargy and kick things into high gear. The Senate returned to work Tuesday, but the House won’t be back until September 12. The lower chamber will meet for just 11 days before the September 30 deadline, which marks the end of the government’s fiscal year, for passing a continuing resolution to fund the government. All the while, concerns about Republican leadership in both chambers percolate, given Mitch McConnell and Louisianan Rep. Steve Scalise’s health issues, and the possibility of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy being threatened with a motion to vacate.
The last major Congressional fight over the nation’s finances was the early summer’s contretemps over the debt ceiling. The deal McCarthy struck with President Joe Biden suspended the nation’s debt ceiling, allowing the government to borrow more to pay for previously incurred debts until January 2025. The deal included some spending floors for the government, but Freedom Caucus–influenced spending bills advanced by Republicans in the House have not met those targets.
In an echo of that debt ceiling fight, the Freedom Caucus has released a series of demands to earn their support in staving off a government shutdown. “In the eventuality that Congress must consider a short-term extension of government funding through a Continuing Resolution, we refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending,” the caucus said in an August 21 release. “Any support for a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending levels grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago.”
The Freedom Caucus laid down red lines, too. They promised to “oppose any spending measure,” that does not include three items: First, “the House-passed ‘Secure the Border Act of 2023’ to cease the unchecked flow of illegal migrants, combat the evils of human trafficking, and stop the flood of dangerous fentanyl into our communities”; second, measures to “address the unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI”; and finally, measures to “end the Left’s cancerous woke policies in the Pentagon undermining our military’s core warfighting mission.”
As for funding the Ukraine war, the House Freedom Caucus “will oppose any blank check for Ukraine in any supplemental appropriations bill.”
But McCarthy is pleading with the caucus and aligned conservative members to drop efforts to pass spending bills with conservative priorities, such as the effort to end the Pentagon’s program to reimburse women in the military who travel to procure abortions. Instead, McCarthy is pushing them to save those fights for negotiations over long-term government spending bills later this year and to support the short-term solution of a clean Continuing Resolution without protest.
McCarthy has a point. Time and time again, the political party that is perceived to be the cause of a government shutdown suffers electorally. Most of the time, Republicans bear the brunt of that effect; Democratic spending takes the nation to the brink, and the only way out is more spending. Democrats have no qualms about that. Republicans do, and their opposition to further spending appears to be support for dysfunction and a government shutdown—though the consequences of that are frequently overstated. The Republican argument, that Washington’s runaway spending is the cause of a potential shutdown in the first place, hardly ever lands with voters because at the argument is too late. When a shutdown fight comes, Republicans have already lost, and Republicans suffer the consequences.
That is especially true in this case. The Continuing Resolution that will probably end up passing will continue spending plans passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress in a lame-duck session.
Conservative members of Congress remember the 2022 Omnibus well, however. “We will oppose any attempt by Washington to revert to its old playbook of using a series of short-term funding extensions designed to push Congress up against a December deadline to force the passage of yet another monstrous, budget busting, pork filled, lobbyist handout omnibus spending bill at year’s end and we will use every procedural tool necessary to prevent that outcome,” a House Freedom Caucus release from August read.
Also top of mind for conservative Republicans is the aforementioned debt ceiling debacle. After McCarthy struck a deal with Biden, McCarthy and GOP House leadership touted spending cuts, moving federal funds to veterans and defense, protecting some of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, and work requirements for food aid.
Many conservative members of Congress, however, thought McCarthy was snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The spending cuts obtained by McCarthy were fractions of the proposed spending cuts the GOP-led House passed in the Limit, Save, Grow Act. For example, the Limit, Save, Grow Act would have rescinded the $80 billion provided for Biden’s massive IRS expansion in the Inflation Reduction Act. The McCarthy-Biden deal cut just over $1 billion from the IRS. Other proposed cuts and repurposing were merely suggestions that the Biden administration could circumvent. The deal also provided funding for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which will transport natural gas through Appalachia—a West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin reelection item. In the end, more Democrats than Republicans voted in favor of the debt ceiling hike, which is a telltale sign Republicans lost.
If Republicans are stuck passing Democratic spending priorities even in lame-duck sessions of Congress or on the eve of a government shutdown, at some point, conservatives must resolve to strengthen their hand and bet big. It’s a gamble, but maybe it will take the Freedom Caucus’s no-nonsense approach to pull Republicans out of the hole.
The post Shutdown Season appeared first on The American Conservative.
Lateo.net - Flux RSS en pagaille (pour en ajouter : @ moi) 