The distrubingly plausible case that Jim Jordan can get the votes
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Jim Jordan is the second candidate for Speaker to get a majority vote from the Republican conference, and its professional parochial graspers are acting accordingly:
lol this is like an existential crisis for Elise. She’s running around the capitol completely unable to figure out who’s she’s supposed to be sucking up to. https://t.co/pbWVOmGS76— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 13, 2023
Given that having a radical who will shut down the government for unpopular reasons, supported the 1/6 insurrectionists, and is attached to a major sexual abuse scandal without being the subject of a personality cult as Speaker would be a net negative for candidates in competitive races, you’d think that at least the necessary handful of Republicans in marginal seats would use a veto and tell the conference to try again. But…does this sound like something Republican House “moderates” would actually do?
One House Republican aide tells me he’s confident Jim Jordan will get elected speaker.
Why?
“The people opposing him are moderates. Either he gets it or the moderates for the first time ever grow a spine,” the aide says.— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 13, 2023
Remember when the TUESDAY GROUP temporarily stopped Paul Ryan from passing a politically suicidal ACA repeal bill, the Freedom Caucus responded by making the bill even more toxic, and the “moderates” were like “OK, sure, we’ll vote for that?” And then they complained bitterly when their Democratic opponents beat them by pointing out that they had voted to take healthcare away from tens of millions of people to pay for an upper-class tax cut? I do, and it makes it hard to escape the assumption that they’ll roll over and play dead in exchange for nothing once again.