There are at least 10-20 Republicans who remain unwilling to support Rep. Jim Jordan. They're frustrated over the treatment of Rep. Steve Scalise during his speaker bid and still angry over former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's ouster.

Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, still faces an uphill climb to the House speakership, with at least 10 to 20 Republican members who oppose his nomination, CBS News has learned, based on background conversations over the weekend with six key House Republicans and more than a dozen sources familiar with the deliberations.

“At least 10 to 20,” one of the House Republicans told CBS News on Sunday, while another added that that Jordan’s support has grown incrementally in recent days but remains soft.

While Jordan’s confidants remain optimistic that he can get to the necessary 217 votes Tuesday, when the House is scheduled to bring a vote to the floor, several who are more critical of Jordan privately insisted this weekend that at about a dozen Republicans remain unwilling to support him, due to their frustrations over how Rep. Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, was treated during his speaker bid and their simmering anger over the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They also are wary of whether Jordan can handle the intensity of the challenges facing Congress in the coming months.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    If he’s down to needing “only” 10-20 holdouts, he’s actually gaining significant ground. This should worry you.

    The moderates of the party are simply growing tired of all of this and are more likely to vote for him simply because there are no other viable options. The problems with this are: Jim Jordan becomes speaker of the House. The MAGA wing gets rewarded for causing this mess by having one of their own elected speaker once the dust settles, emboldening them to do it again in the future. And it also reinforces how effective the strategy of forcing people out of office by making the position untenable for anyone who actually wants to do the work, leaving only the crazies to fill the void is.

    My only real hope is that Jim Jordan is incompetent enough and so hyper-focused on partisan grievance politics that he won’t cause too much damage. That, and he only has just over a year in office. The bad thing is that if you think these people are crazy, remember that they’re simply paving the way for those who will come after them, many of which are even crazier than they are.