Update: Do you have to be a thug to be speaker or president?

Jim Jordan is following in the footsteps of his mentor, Donald Trump

Friends,

How is Jim Jordan — the man who was involved in seeking to overturn the 2020 election, who wants to impeach Biden, who has fomented government shutdowns, who refuses to fund Ukraine, and who has never brought a meaningful bill to the House floor in 17 years — rounding up votes among House Republicans to make himself speaker? 

The same way Trump maintains Republican support for his dangerous lies: by threatening to unleash the rage of the party’s MAGA base and far-right media ecosystem against any lawmaker standing in the way.

Some of Jordan’s Republican House colleagues still refuse to back him. He lost the first roll-call vote on the House floor today when 17 Republicans voted against him, depriving Jordan of the 217 votes he needs to secure the gavel.

But remember, it took Kevin McCarthy 15 ballots to clinch the vote in January.

Jordan has Trump’s backing and his own reputation as a political thug (former Republican Speaker John Boehner described him as a “legislative terrorist”).

His supporters have been threatening holdouts with primary challenges and political doxxing if they don’t go along. Jordan has also enlisted the right-wing media in the fight. Fox News host Sean Hannity reached out to several holdout lawmakers who were not supporting Jordan. One of Hannity’s producers contacted lawmakers with an email asking why they weren’t backing him.

Extremist Republicans get what they want by unleashing the MAGA base and the right-wing media.

That’s the way Jordan’s mentor, Donald Trump, has long operated. In recent months Trump has even threatened judges and prosecutors trying to hold him accountable for alleged crimes.

Yesterday, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is presiding over Trump’s trial for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, imposed a “limited gag order” that bars Trump from publicly attacking special counsel Jack Smith, other prosecutors, court staff, or potential witnesses.

Judge Chutkan did not address how she will enforce her order. She merely said she would assess any consequences for Trump if and when he violates it. As a practical matter, though, what is she to do if his attacks continue? Throw Trump in jail and put his MAGA base into a frenzy?

Thuggery is inconsistent with democracy. It gives a few fanatics the power to dictate policy. It is a step on the road to fascism.

We have come to expect thuggery from Trump, but now it’s spread through the highest reaches of the Republican Party — pulling the GOP to the extreme right.

I worry most about Trump’s (and Jordan’s) cultish MAGA followers. Threats to unleash their wrath are credible, because they have already demonstrated blind obedience and proclivities toward violence, as on January 6, 2021.

Ninety years ago, these sorts of people wore black shirts or brown shirts or red armbands with swastikas, and their hateful lies and threats silenced the publics of several nations.

Americans didn’t succumb, but the world sacrificed millions of people to contain the scourge. America remained resolute against the fanatics because we had leaders motivated by the common good rather than personal ambition, and a civic culture that respected the rule of law and the Constitution.

But the Constitution is impotent if powerful people — a former president, a potential speaker of the House — get their way by threatening to unleash the rage of their supporters, and if the public normalizes this behavior.

This is not normal. All of us must condemn it — and on Election Day, send Trump and his House Republicans packing.

As Charles Evans Hughes, the chief justice of the Supreme Court during the 1930s when fascist thugs threatened democracy, noted, “You may think that the Constitution is your security — it is nothing but a piece of paper … it is nothing at all, unless you have sound and uncorrupted public opinion.”

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