Opinion Stonewall Jordan marches Republicans into the wilderness By Dana Milbank

[cigaretteman]

After Jim Jordan’s second failed attempt to become speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Garcia, a swing-district Republican from California, stepped off the House floor and into the 19th century.
“Clearly, what we’re doing right now is not working,” he told a few of us reporters on Wednesday as he exited the Speaker’s Lobby. “So we’ve got to get a different approach here.”


Such as?
“It sounds silly, but let’s go to Gettysburg or something,” Garcia proposed, “so that the Republican Party can once again remember why we do what we do.”
Not silly at all! What better way for feuding Republicans to hone tactics for their party’s civil war than to go to the site of the bloodiest battle of the real Civil War? They could spend a pleasant day celebrating their ineffectiveness by reenacting Pickett’s Charge.

Alas, getting to Pennsylvania might be too much of a logistical challenge for a group that can’t even organize lunch. Republicans scheduled a caucus meeting for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Capitol basement after the day’s failed vote, and I watched staffers wheel in a cart piled high with pizza boxes. But the meeting never happened, and the pies were scavenged by staffers, police and reporters.


Garcia proposed that his colleagues could instead “do an off-site” nearby, either at Manassas or “somewhere else.” I suggest they head down I-95 to a Civil War site whose name perfectly matches the Republicans’ current situation: The Battle of the Wilderness.


Almost a year ago, voters entrusted Republicans with control of the House. And this is what they have done with it:

Fifteen rounds of voting to choose a speaker in January. Nine months of lurching between crises and failed votes on the House floor. A march to impeach President Biden on fabricated charges. The ouster of the speaker. A successful coup to topple the man Republicans nominated to replace the ousted speaker. Two failed speaker votes (and counting) on the House floor for the man who led the coup. Seventeen days (and counting) without a functioning House of Representatives at a time of two wars and a looming government shutdown. And no solution in sight.


Last week, I likened the House Republicans’ governance to a goat rodeo, but the comparison was grossly unfair — to ruminants. The House majority is paralyzed, unable to govern and unwilling to work with Democrats for the good of the institution or the country.
Rep. Debbie Lesko, a Republican from Arizona, issued a statement on Tuesday evening announcing that she would not run for reelection. “Right now,” she wrote, “Washington, D.C. is broken.”


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...tid=mc_magnet-opcongress_inline_collection_19
End of carousel
No, Congresswoman. Washington isn’t broken. The House of Representatives is broken — because you and your Republican colleagues broke it.
If there were any remaining doubt about this, you need only look at what Lesko and 199 of her Republican colleagues did on the House floor just four hours before she sent out her Washington-is-broken retirement missive. They voted to elect as speaker of the House:

• An instigator of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and facilitator of Donald Trump’s attempted coup who defied a duly-issued subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the insurrection.
• A legislator who hasn’t enacted any legislation in his 16 years in Congress — but who issued 45 subpoenas this year alone.
• A thuggish bully described as a “legislative terrorist” by one of his predecessors, former Republican speaker John Boehner.

Now, that member of Congress, Jordan, true to form, is terrorizing fellow House Republicans who won’t support him for speaker. Jordan-allied lawmakers, conservative activists and right-wing media figures such as Sean Hannity and Steve Bannon have led an intimidation campaign of phone harassment, social media attacks and threats.

On Thursday morning, Rep. Drew Ferguson (Ga.) said that after he voted against Jordan on the second ballot, “my family and I started receiving death threats.” He had switched his vote away from Jordan in the first place because of the “threatening tactics and pressure campaigns Jordan and his allies were using.”
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), who, after voting for Jordan on the floor on Tuesday, withdrew her support on Wednesday, said she, too, received “credible death threats” and a barrage of abusive calls. “One thing I cannot stomach, or support, is a bully,” she said in a statement.


ADVERTISING

Rep. Nick LaLota (N.Y.), a Jordan foe, posted one of the obscene death threats he had received. Rep. Don Bacon (Neb.), another Jordan opponent, reported that even his wife had received threatening emails and texts, and vulgar voice messages, some of which he shared with Politico’s Olivia Beavers.

Officially, Jordan condemned the threats, yet they kept coming. These are the same sorts of threats that have been visited on Jordan’s usual opponents — Democratic lawmakers and targets of his committee probes — for years.
Fortunately, on Tuesday, 20 courageous Republicans stood in the breach and blocked Jordan’s terrorist takeover of the speaker’s gavel. But this also means that 200 House Republicans — including all members of GOP leadership and several self-styled moderates — voted for an extremist takeover of their majority. This was no aberration: The next day, 199 of them did it again in a second vote.


It’s no longer a matter of the Republican establishment being disrupted by fanatics. As this week’s votes show, the fanatics now are the establishment. It was the equivalent of 90 percent of House Democrats nominating Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib to be speaker — except no member of “the Squad” ever fomented an attack on the Capitol.

On Thursday, Jordan called off what would have been a third failed vote on the House floor. Instead, he backed a plan to expand the powers of the temporary speaker, Patrick McHenry (N.C.), to allow the House to function for the next three months — while Jordan would spend that time putting thumbscrews to the holdouts.
This caused the Republican caucus, meeting once more in the Capitol basement, to erupt in furor. Jordan’s foes didn’t want him to remain as the speaker nominee. And Jordan’s hard-line supporters didn’t want to reopen the House.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/19/republican-civil-war-house-gop-jim-jordan-speaker-fight/

 

[cigaretteman]

Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.) burst out of the meeting calling the idea “the biggest F.U. to Republican voters I’ve ever seen.”

Rep. Bob Good (Va.) decried an “unconstitutional” and “highly dangerous coalition government arrangement with Democrats.”
Rep. Troy Nehls (Tex.) renewed his call to make Trump the speaker.
Gettysburg is sounding better and better.
The confusion is so deep that even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) is starting to make sense. Congresswoman Jewish Space Lasers left a GOP caucus meeting early this week, telling a group of us that it was “a venting session” with “mostly a lot of arguing” and “just airing grievances” — much like “every single meeting” lately.
This was true enough. At the conference meeting Greene left, Rep. Victoria Spartz (Ind.), known for constantly changing her positions and making bizarre threats, reportedly broke into tears as she delivered an incomprehensible speech to her colleagues. “I’ve never wasted so much time," said Greene. “Even on vacation, I’m busier.”



On social media, Rep. Mike Collins (Ga.) has been mocking his Republican colleagues’ glacial pace:
“Looking forward to clocking in around lunchtime today. No need to rush getting a speaker!”
“I miss the good ole days when we used to do 2-3 votes a day for speaker. Gets it done faster.”
And: “If we all get a chance to be voted on as speaker, are we going alphabetically or by class? Trying to plan Thanksgiving travel.”
“My new favorite member of Congress,” someone replied.
“Low bar!” observed Collins.

Steve Scalise won the Republican nomination for speaker fair and square last week, earning 113 votes to Jordan’s 99. But Jordan’s supporters refused to back the majority leader. Scalise (La.) withdrew — “kneecapped” by Jordan’s forces, as Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) put it. “It was the most egregious act against a sitting member of our conference I have witnessed in my thirteen years of service.”


After Scalise withdrew, House Republicans launched into one of their now-frequent episodes of self-loathing. Among the ways lawmakers described their own caucus to reporters: “A ship that doesn’t have a rudder.” “We need to … get our heads out of our rear end.” “A broken conference.” “All thrust and no vector.” “A bunch of idiots.” “Pretty dysfunctional.”
Things were so desperate that Austin Scott nearly got elected speaker — by accident.
“When I woke up this morning, I had no intention of doing this,” the little-known GOP backbencher from Georgia told reporters last Friday morning. “Actually, I don’t necessarily want to be speaker of the House.”
But he threw his hat into the ring anyway, to give his Republican colleagues at least some alternative to Jordan. And so great was the animosity toward Jordan that 81 Republicans threw their support behind Scott, who even some Capitol Hill veterans couldn’t have picked out of a lineup.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel


In the hallways of the Longworth House Office Building, where Republicans were meeting in the Ways and Means Committee room, order was unraveling. Indicted Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) emerged from the office of Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) carrying an infant. Was it his baby?
“Not yet,” the famous prevaricator answered. (The child apparently belonged to a staffer.)
An anti-Israel activist took this moment to harass Santos over “genocide of the Palestinians.” And the attention-loving Santos, after handing off the baby, returned to confront the activist in front of a mob of reporters. “He is a f---ing terrorist sympathizer!” Santos screamed to the journalists, also calling his heckler “human scum.”
After the caucus meeting, Jordan’s allies fanned out to begin their intimidation campaign. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told us that opponents’ “phones are going to be lit up.”

 

[cigaretteman]

And so they were. On Sunday, a Fox News producer for Sean Hannity sent an intimidating email to the holdouts — or “snowflakes,” as Hannity called them on air — that was intercepted by Axios’s Juliegrace Brufke. Hannity also provided phone numbers so his audience could harass Jordan’s foes.

On Monday, many of Jordan’s opponents, an assortment of institutionalists and moderates, did what they had done all year when confronted with the far-right’s threats: They wilted. For example, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) had called herself a “hell no” who would “absolutely not” back Jordan. But after the speaker-designate and his thugs gave her the treatment, Wagner said Jordan “has allayed my concerns.”
Republican whip Tom Emmer (Minn.), a notoriously inept vote-counter during McCarthy’s speakership, predicted victory for Jordan: “We’re going to have a speaker tomorrow.”
They didn’t.
Jordan bullied most of his opponents into submission. But a brave band still opposed him: a combination of lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee (Jordan routinely votes against their appropriations bills); swing-district moderates (who fear the extremist label Jordan would give them); and a few old-bull institutionalists (who actually care about things such as honoring election results).
A leader of the never-Jordan resistance, Bacon was looking appropriately battered on Monday night, with a scabbed-over wound on his right cheek. “I just can’t abide by the fact that a small group violated the rules to get what they wanted,” he told a group of us. “So I think we’ve got to have consequences and you’ve got to stand up for that. … You just can’t cave in.”
Still, he was dreading the abuse he would receive from the Jordan forces during the alphabetical roll call on the floor. “Maybe I could change my name to Zacon,” he wondered aloud.
Winning over the remaining holdouts required serious persuasion, but Jordan knew only how to bully. “You can’t have the same style with everybody,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), a Jordan ally, admitted to a group of us. “I think that some of it did backfire.”

“Jim is the voice of the American people who have felt voiceless,” House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) told the House during her speech nominating Jordan on Tuesday, “whether on the wrestling mat or in the committee room.”
The Democrats erupted in hoots. Was Stefanik trying to remind everybody of the many allegations that Jordan, as a college wrestling coach, had turned a blind eye to sexual assaults against athletes?
Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the Democratic Conference chair, countered that Jordan was “the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier and an insurrectionist.”
Jordan laughed.
Aguilar pointed out that Jordan “has not passed a single bill” in Congress.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who led McCarthy’s ouster, applauded.
Each “no” vote against the Republican nominee sent a murmur rippling through the chamber.
As in January, the vote ended with the now common refrain: “A speaker has not been elected.”
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters it was time to convene “the Bourbon and Cigar Caucus.”
Jordan made only a perfunctory attempt at buttonholing a few of his opponents on the floor. He and his staff spent the afternoon trying to blame Scalise for his failure.
On Tuesday night, as his allies continued threatening holdouts, Jordan posted an appeal for unity: “We must stop attacking each other and come together.” For him.
Inconveniently, Gaetz shattered this phony call for harmony with a fundraising email: “RINO’s are working with RADICAL DEMOCRATS like AOC, ILHAN OMAR and RASHIDA TLAIB to BLOCK JIM JORDAN from becoming SPEAKER!!”
After an angry retort from Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a Jordan opponent, Gaetz, hawker of hatred, blamed “a vendor.”
But the holdouts still weren’t buying a Jordan speakership.
“The question now occurs … ” McHenry began on Wednesday afternoon, before catching himself. “The question now recurs, on the election of a speaker.”
Once again, Jordan lost the vote before the alphabetical roll call made it out of the D’s. He swung the votes of two holdouts but gained four new opponents. One Jordan opponent voted for Boehner — to cheers from the Democrats. Another voted for Candice Miller, the public works commissioner of Macomb County, Mich. — momentarily baffling the clerk.
No one said they had to be rational. After voting for Emmer for speaker in the first ballot, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) went on CNN.
“Do you really want Tom Emmer to be speaker?” host Dana Bash asked.
“No, I don’t,” Buck replied. “I don’t like Tom Emmer. I figured this would be the worst job in America.”
Friends don’t let friends become speaker of the House.
Jordan planned to force the House to take a third speakership ballot on Thursday, but, facing another certain loss, he instead assembled Republicans in the Capitol basement for another closed-door screaming match.
Inside, lawmakers reportedly came close to blows. Gaetz stood to interrupt McCarthy, who told the Florida congressman to sit down, and “the entire conference screamed at him,” McCarthy said. Some demanded Jordan end his speakership bid; Jordan refused. Some vented about the death threats against Jordan’s opponents. And many denounced the plan to give McHenry temporary powers to allow the House to function. After four hours, the caucus shelved its just-hatched plan to empower McHenry, and Jordan said he would force another speaker vote on the floor.
Republicans were back in the wilderness.

 

[nu2u]

I mistakenly proclaimed that peak MAGA had been reached when Scalise was knee capped. Much more dysfunction ahead.