Jim Jordan is going to put together a third vote. And then a fourth and a fifth and we don’t know how many. Neither does he. What’s intriguing about all this is that Jordan never particularly wanted to be House Speaker. It’s something that is somehow being thrust upon him by fate. Remember, after all, he’s somebody who is:
- An instigator of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and facilitator of Donald Trump’s attempted coup who defied a duly-issued subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the insurrection.
- A legislator who hasn’t enacted any legislation in his 16 years in Congress — but who issued 45 subpoenas this year alone.
- A thuggish bully described as a “legislative terrorist” by one of his predecessors, former Republican speaker John Boehner.
Take a look at how this debacle shapes up so far.
It's been 16 days and Republicans have yet to elect a Speaker of the House.
Here's how it's going. pic.twitter.com/SnZbJOxkC9
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) October 19, 2023
And then we get to the death threats. Now death threats are a means of legislation, folks. Fancy that? And in the United States of America, no less. You heard Ken Buck talk about his death threats in a post here today, here are other House members talking about theirs.
On Thursday morning, Rep. Drew Ferguson (Ga.) said that after he voted against Jordan on the second ballot, “my family and I started receiving death threats.” He had switched his vote away from Jordan in the first place because of the “threatening tactics and pressure campaigns Jordan and his allies were using.”
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), who, after voting for Jordan on the floor on Tuesday, withdrew her support on Wednesday, said she, too, received “credible death threats” and a barrage of abusive calls. “One thing I cannot stomach, or support, is a bully,” she said in a statement.
Rep. Nick LaLota (N.Y.), a Jordan foe, posted one of the obscene death threats he had received. Rep. Don Bacon (Neb.), another Jordan opponent, reported that even his wife had received threatening emails and texts, and vulgar voice messages, some of which he shared with Politico’s Olivia Beavers.
And you remember on Tuesday,
“20 courageous Republicans stood in the breach and blocked Jordan’s terrorist takeover of the speaker’s gavel. But this also means that 200 House Republicans — including all members of GOP leadership and several self-styled moderates — voted for an extremist takeover of their majority. This was no aberration: The next day, 199 of them did it again in a second vote.”
Now we’re going to see the House go into a third vote. Will more Republicans cave? To death threats or to other pressures? And will Jim Jordan, insurrectionist par excellence, be the Speaker of the peoples’ House? It’s looking like more and more of a possibility.
If it does happen, look for legislation to be totally sandbagged. We’ll be lucky to keep the government open.
What a way to run the government of the richest and most powerful country that has ever existed.
Lest we forget, nothing but The Best People™ from this crowd.
Death threats? Gee, only “mere threats?” Next will be “The Real Deal” and some jackwad will pull out her gun on the floor of the House and NOT shoot herself in the foot, or not.
I wouldn’t put anything past these domestic terrorists.
We all knew they’d start attacking each other, this type of vile cretins always do.
It’s truly frightening.
Like the neofascist, they say it was a joke or it was just “locker room talk with the boys”. Plausible deniability always works with rubes…lock them all up.