Rep. Jim Jordan’s bid for House speaker had all the qualities of a roller coaster ride at a third-rate amusement park. It was short; it was loud; it had a few too many twists and turns; and once it was over, riders were left with an uncomfortable feeling of unease.
As we discussed last week, when the right-wing House Judiciary Committee chairman lost to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on an intraparty secret ballot a couple of weeks ago, the conventional wisdom said Jordan’s leadership ambitions were dead. Two days later, the Ohio Republican was his party’s nominee. Two hours later, he faced dramatic opposition that seemed insurmountable. As last week got underway, the Capitol Hill scuttlebutt was that his speakership had momentum, newfound allies and deserved to be seen as inevitable.
As last week wrapped up, Jordan was done. As his last act as speaker-designate, the longtime GOP congressman asked for a secret ballot election within the House Republican conference to determine whether he’d remain his party’s nominee. He received just 86 votes — roughly 39% of the members.
There are a variety of reasons Jordan failed. The pressure campaign launched by his supporters — which ultimately included several death threats against individual House Republicans — certainly didn’t help. What’s more, the fact that Jordan lacked meaningful relationships with most of his GOP colleagues, demonstrated poor fundraising skills, created an easy target for Democrats, and simply lacked the wherewithal to engage in negotiations and strike deals contributed to his downfall.
It also didn’t help that key Republican insiders openly and publicly mocked GOP members from competitive districts, effectively daring them to prove they still had a backbone. Many of them, to the surprise of many (including me), responded well to the challenge.
But as the dust settles on Jordan’s failure, the question of why he fell short is important, but more important is why 90% of House Republicans supported Jordan’s bid in the first place.
By some measures, Jordan has earned the label of Congress’ Worst Member. Sure, there are other radicals from the GOP’s insurrectionist wing who appear overtly hostile toward democracy. And yes, there are other conspiracy theorists. There are also others on Capitol Hill who’ve failed to pass legislation, who’ve overseen failed investigations, who care more about Fox News appearances than governing, and who don’t appear the slightest bit interested in the substance of policymaking.
But the chairman of the Judiciary Committee stands out because he checks each of the boxes. Jordan was, and is, uniquely unfit to serve as a constitutional officer.
House Republicans knew that. The vast majority of them voted to put the gavel in his hands anyway. The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein wrote a terrific piece last week — published before Jordan’s collapse — that raised a point that rings true:
Jordan’s rise, like Trump’s own commanding lead in the 2024 GOP presidential race, provides more evidence that for the first time since the Civil War, the dominant faction in one of America’s two major parties is no longer committed to the principles of democracy as the U.S. has known them. That means the nation now faces the possibility of sustained threats to the tradition of free and fair elections, with Trump’s own antidemocratic tendencies not only tolerated but amplified by his allies across the party.
For those who take democracy and governing seriously, Jordan’s failure should be seen as good news. But as his roller coaster ride comes to an end, the accompanying nausea is caused by the realization that Americans elected a House Republican majority, and 9 out of 10 GOP members were prepared to put their worst colleague in Congress’ most powerful position.
A responsible, healthy political party would’ve laughed uproariously at the very idea of making Jim Jordan the House speaker. The fact most Republicans embraced his candidacy anyway is genuinely scandalous.
