Combative right-wing Republican Jim Jordan failed to win a first vote on Tuesday to serve as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, but more votes were expected to follow that could wear down his opponents.
Keep in mind that representatives are really still playing high school gossip games as their day-to-day life, and I'm imagining a dialog like:
MAGAists: you'll never elect a speaker without us. That makes it our party and we're the boss.
OldGOP: Everyone else wants to make Steve Scalise the speaker, and you can have these fancy titles if you go along.
MAGAists: Nah, we tried that with whats-his-name. We're the boss now.
OldGOP: *eyeroll* Fine, put up your guy and see what happens.
*Jim Jordan loses*
*surprised pikachu*
To be fair, a lot boring old Republicans voted for this guy for the same reason they supported Trump. They’re afraid of being called out by the base and or being primaried for not being right wing enough.
The only people who are standing up are the people in districts that are still purple. And there are fewer and fewer of those because of gerrymandering.
Fox News was actually threatening to sic the base on people who voted against Jordan, according to something I heard on the local community radio earlier. They sent stuff saying like, “Is it true that Representative X is against confirming Jordan? When are you going to let the peoples house open, the people want to know.” To someone at the house. There was another sentence basically threatening to turn their base loose on individual reps if they didn’t flip flop and support Jordan. I’ll have to see if I can dig up an article.