The disaster of Jim Jordan

Time for House Democrats to put together a governing coalition

Friends,

Today, House Republicans nominated Jim Jordan to be the next speaker. But Jordan doesn’t yet have the 217 votes he needs to win — and may not be able to assemble them.

If elected speaker, Jordan would effectively give the House to Donald Trump. That would be a disaster on many levels.

House Democrats might be able to avoid this outcome. They could do it by throwing their weight behind a moderate House Republican (and there are a few left — among the 18 in districts that Biden won in 2020 and whose political futures are imperiled by the Trump Republican extremists now taking over the House). Dems need peel off only five House Republicans to pull this off.

But first, let me give you a bit more background on Jordan.

Last week, Trump endorsed Jordan for speaker. “Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, D.C.,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social message. “He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”

Of course Trump endorsed Jordan. Jordan was an early and prominent supporter of Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election being “stolen” from him. Just two days after Election Day, Jordan spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pennsylvania. In the following weeks, he frequently appeared on Fox News to buttress Trump’s lie.

Jordan even attended White House meetings to develop strategies for reversing the election outcome. He sent a text message to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows arguing that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to stand in the way of the certification of the 2020 election.

White House records show that Trump spoke on the phone with Jordan for 10 minutes on the morning of January 6, before Trump left the White House to give a speech to thousands of his supporters gathered at the Ellipse.

That afternoon, after pro-Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, then-Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told Jordan to get away from her because “You f*ck*ng did this!” 

Jordan subsequently took to the House floor to object to the certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win.

On January 11, 2021 — five days after the attack and the attempt of some Republican lawmakers to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election — Trump awarded Jordan the Medal of Freedom, without any explanation of why Jordan deserved it. We can only surmise it was to reward Jordan for his loyalty to Trump.

Jordan later refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee, despite being served with a subpoena.

Like Trump, Jordan opposes continued U.S. support for Ukraine. He has consistently voted against measures that would increase security assistance to Ukraine.

And don’t expect Jordan to avoid a government shutdown. To the contrary, Jordan fomented the 2013 shutdown (which led then-Speaker John Boehner to call him a “legislative terrorist”) and cheered on Trump’s record-breaking 35-day shutdown over the border wall.

Last week, in a speech at the University of Minnesota, Liz Cheney stated:

“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives. Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election…. There was a handful of people, of which he was the leader, who knew what Donald Trump had planned. Now somebody needs to ask Jim Jordan, ‘Why didn’t you report to the Capitol Police what you knew Donald Trump had planned? You were in those meetings at the White House.’”

She added: “If the Republicans decide that Jim Jordan should be the Speaker of the House…there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”

***

There is a way out of this Trumpish hell hole. Democrats need only five Republican votes to cobble together their own governing coalition.

They can do this by reaching out to the Republicans who won their seats in districts that Biden won in 2020 — and who are politically imperiled by House Republican extremists.

Either bring five of them across the aisle to make House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker. Or make one of them Speaker by promising them all House Democrats’ votes if they can gather support from just five otherwise imperiled Republicans.

Who might this be? Someone like Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick isn’t perfect. He declined to vote to impeach Trump and voted against establishing the January 6 committee (even though he described the attack on the Capitol as an “attempted coup”).

But Fitzpatrick would make a decent speaker. He has been ranked for three straight years as the most bipartisan member of the House by the The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. (Their annual bipartisan index measures how often a member of Congress introduces bills that attract co-sponsors from the opposition party, and how often they in turn co-sponsor bills introduced from across the aisle.)

Fitzpatrick co-chairs the House’s Problem Solvers Caucus, which consists of 56 members — half Democrats, half Republicans — who are committed to finding “common sense solutions to many of the country’s toughest challenges.” And it has found such common ground on issues ranging from gun violence to infrastructure to criminal justice reform.

Common sense. Common ground. My friends, it’s possible. It has to be. The fate of the nation, and much of the world, depends on it.

***

[Note: I’ll post my summary essay for the Common Good next Friday. This has been such a rotten week in so many ways that I just couldn’t find inspiration to write about the common good.]