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As recently as Friday afternoon, Rep. Jim Jordan faced significant opposition to his bid for House speaker from his own GOP colleagues. In a nominating vote, the Ohio Republican received only 56% support from his conference, despite running against a relatively obscure member who did not campaign for the position and who publicly conceded that he didn’t want the job.
Jordan learned soon after that at least 55 members of the Republican conference were prepared to oppose his nomination on the House floor. His prospects appeared bleak.
That was four days ago — and in politics, a lot can change in four days.
Following a weekend of hardball tactics and intense pressure, the number of GOP members who remain opposed to Jordan’s bid has dropped significantly, to the point that the total is now believed to be in the single digits. This doesn’t guarantee that the far-right House Judiciary Committee chairman will succeed — it would only take five Republican members to stand between Jordan and the gavel — but the partisan landscape looks dramatically different than it did late last week.
Among the most notable members to change their minds about Jordan’s candidacy was House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers of Alabama, who jolted Capitol Hill roughly 24 hours ago with news that he’d changed his mind. Roll Call reported:
Rogers said that he and Jordan, R-Ohio, agreed on the need for Congress to pass a “strong” defense authorization bill, appropriations to “fund our government’s vital functions” and a new multiyear farm bill. “Since I was first elected to the House, I have always been a team player and supported what the majority of the Republican Conference agrees to,” Rogers wrote on X [the platform formerly known as Twitter].
At first blush, this might seem like a sensible explanation. The House Republican Conference nominated Jordan; Rogers is a GOP member in good standing; so he’s simply agreeing to honor the results of an intraparty election. What’s wrong with that?
Quite a bit, actually.
As is usually the case, context is everything. It was just six days ago when the House Republican Conference held an intraparty election, featuring two competitive candidates who’d had an opportunity to campaign and make their pitch to their colleagues. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise prevailed.
A day later, Jordan’s allies didn’t like the results, so they rejected Scalise’s candidacy and forced the Louisiana Republican to withdraw — at which point Jordan said he’d gladly fill the vacancy.
As we discussed last week, it reflected a striking perspective in Republican politics. “We in the GOP minority weren’t satisfied with the wishes of the GOP majority,” Jordan’s allies effectively argued, “and now that we’ve successfully forced out the majority’s choice, the minority’s choice should prevail.”
When Rogers said he wants to be “a team player,” which leads him to support “what the majority of the Republican Conference” agreed to, what he actually endorsed was a scheme that undid what the majority of the Republican Conference agreed to.
GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told CNN overnight, “You don’t have a process where I play by the rules and these other people can’t and then they get what they want. That’s not American. Americans want fair play.”
We’ll find out in a few hours just how many of Bacon’s Republican colleagues agree with this straightforward assessment.