The US House of Representatives will remain leaderless into a third week as Republicans continue to confront a familiar conundrum: how to unite their fractious majority and prove to a skeptical US public that they are a party capable of governing, not just funneling rightwing outrage and culture war rhetoric.
More than a week after a cadre of discontented Republicans deposed their own speaker, Kevin McCarthy, the conference is still deeply divided over who should replace him with no one candidate seemingly able to garner enough support to end the squabbling.
Congressman Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, won the first secret internal election to be the party’s nominee to be speaker on Wednesday but by Thursday evening he had withdrawn his consideration.
On Friday, Republicans met again and chose his challenger, congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, a founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom caucus and one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill. But the behind-closed-doors vote showed he was still a staggering 65 votes short of the 217 needed to get the job.
If Jordan were to eventually win – and a floor vote could now come on Tuesday next week – it would be a remarkable victory for the hard-right faction of Republican lawmakers. After years of driving their party’s speakers from power, they are now on the cusp of claiming the gavel for themselves.
But victory is far from certain in a Republican party once known for its iron discipline and ability to stay on message but now seen as a group of politicians scrapping for power and influence among themselves.
The long saga to elect a new speaker underscores the dramatic evolution of the House Republican conference, whose own members now fear may no longer be governable. As McCarthy’s short tenure proved, grievance not the gavel is the coin of the realm in present-day Republican House politics. And whenever there is a handful of discontented Republicans, dysfunction is likely to follow.
“These guys want to be in the minority,” Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska, who represents a swing district being targeted by Democrats, told reporters on Thursday. “I think they would prefer that because they could just vote no and yell and scream all the time.”
In another era, it would have been unthinkable for House Republicans to undermine their party’s chosen candidate for speaker. But in present-day Republican politics, there are often more incentives than consequences for breaking the rules and thwarting the majority.
Case in point: Jordan was elected to be the party’s candidate to lead the House, days after losing to Scalise in the House’s internal election for speaker. But an intervention on his behalf by Donald Trump, and a refusal by his supporters to stand down, blocked Scalise’s path and afforded Jordan a second chance at the nomination.
It marks quite the journey for the Ohio congressman, who the former Republican House speaker John Boehner once branded Jordan a “legislative terrorist”. Jordan and his allies tormented Boehner until he left the post. Boehner’s successors worked harder to appease the right flank of their party, but it did little to ease the internal unrest.
Among the many concessions McCarthy made to the far right in exchange for their support for his speakership bid was a rule allowing any single member of the House to force action on a resolution to remove the speaker. It won him the gavel, after an unprecedented 15 rounds of balloting, but it also sealed his fate as the first speaker in US history to be removed from the position.
Tensions were already boiling on the right, when a handful of ultraconservative Republicans revolted and triggered his ouster last week. They were angry with McCarthy for forging an 11th-hour deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. It came after McCarthy worked with Democrats and the White House earlier this year to avert a calamitous debt-default, which they viewed as a betrayal.
Since his removal, McCarthy has insisted he would not have done it differently.
“I think it’s important whoever takes that job is willing to risk the job for doing what’s right for the American public,” McCarthy said, insisting he did what a speaker should do when faced with government closure: compromise with the minority party.
Yet Jordan has shown repeatedly that he is willing to risk a debt default or government shutdown when the alternative means a compromise with Democrats. Jordan voted earlier this month against a measure that kept the government open.
A fixture of rightwing media, the Ohio congressman is better known for his hardball tactics and loyalty to Donald Trump than his legislative accomplishments, of which there are few. Vanderbilt University’s Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked Jordan 217th out of 222 House Republicans in the 117th Congress. Compare that to Scalise who ranked 95th.
In 2018, Jordan was instrumental in triggering the longest federal government shutdown in US history. Two years later, he helped amplify Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and voted against certifying the electoral college vote in the hours after the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. Over the last year, he has used his position as chair of the House judiciary committee to pursue politically-motivated investigations into Biden and his administration.
Several of the party’s relatively moderate members, especially those who represent districts Biden won in 2020, are wary of where a Speaker Jordan might lead. But whether there is an appetite to find a more mainstream alternative remains to be seen.
Congress is under pressure to respond to the war between Israel and Hamas, there is the question of additional funding for Ukraine as it attempts to repel invading Russian forces, and the stopgap bill to keep the government open is set to expire in mid-November.
With Americans, and the world, watching, Republicans are poised to return to the House floor next week to once again attempt to elect a new speaker. But whether Jordan wins or loses, it all sets the stage for another combustible speakership.
