Before you start foaming at the mouth about a possible Jim Jordan House Speakership, relax, take a deep breath. Now, let it out, and do it again. When it comes right down to it, the Speaker of the House has only one duty that makes him more powerful than any other sitting member of the House. He controls calling bills to the floor for a vote. That’s pretty much it. Just like the Senate Majority Leader controls the flow of bills to the Senate floor.
In my last article, one of my readers submitted a comment opining that if Jordan got the gavel, we could turn out the lights, he’d wreck what’s left of the Constitution. Relax brother, it doesn’t work that way. Jordan can be a world class pain in the ass, he can make loud, strident, unrealistic demands in the budget negotiations, he can even shut the government down in a pique of fury if he wants, but he can’t make any substantial constitutional changes. He can bring far right bills to the floor, and demand GOP fealty to pass them, but who cares? They’re DOA in the Senate.
There are two reasons why I’m not particularly worried. First, I honestly don’t believe that Jordan can get the necessary 217 votes needed to get the gavel. And here’s why. When Jordan jumped into the ring on the first round, he immediately got Traitor Tot’s full throated support. And he took a spanking from Steve Scalise. Now he’s on ballot #2, and you know what’s missing? Not a word from El Pendejo Presidente in support. Apparently even the Cheeto Prophet gleaned the fact the the GOP House isn’t interested in his opinion.
Second, even if Jordan does get the gavel, he’s going to be in no better position than McCarthy was. Because he’s going to have to cut deals with skeptical moderate House members facing difficult reelections, and pissed off McCarthy loyalists looking for revenge. And if he tries to welsh from his word, any one of them can do a Gaetz, and bring a motion to the floor to vacate the Speakership. Those moderate vulnerable incumbents are going to have no patience with his bullsh*t when it comes to a government shutdown, or support for Israel and Ukraine.
On her show tonight while talking about this subject, Rachel Maddow raised an intriguing prospect. Her worry was that if Jordan somehow or other managed to be named Speaker, he could simply refuse to certify the results of a 2024 election in which the Orange Sh*tgibbon lost. And I’m not sure of exactly what Rachel was talking about, since we just saw that that’s not how the constitutional process works.
January 6th, 2021. Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House, but she had no more than a purely ceremonious role, introducing the Vice President to preside over the certification of the votes. The Trombies in the House tried The Green Bay Sweep of Navarro and Eastman fame, and all that did was delay things. It opened a mandatory debate process that only delayed things. In the Senate, a handful or Trump handmaidens pulled the same lame sh*t, and delayed the process.
And in the Senate, the same damn thing happened. Trump acolytes seconded the House protest, and opened up another round of debate. But when all of the bullsh*t and obfuscation finally came to the end, it all still ended up in the same damn place.
A floor vote. Because that’s how it works. When all of the arguments, the bullsh*t, and the nonsense is done with, the path is clear. The House and the Senate still have to hold a floor vote, up or down, to determine whether or not to certify the results of the election. And when it came down to that, the results of the election were certified in both chambers, and Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is the 46th President of the United States. Period. Full stop.
That is the true brilliance of our constitutional republic. The Founding Fathers, realizing that anybody not in that room with them were inherently a bunch of f*ck ups, went to extreme lengths to keep any one man from being able to subvert the constitutional electoral process. Jordan can try it again, but he’ll get no further than the last time, especially when the post J6 congress crafted a new law to certify the Vice President’s role as being purely ceremonial, with no way to subvert the process. Rest easy, Jordan can do damage, but he can’t destroy.
Jordan is a stone coid insurrectionist as are all those that voted to throw out legitimate votes if not the entire Republican party. Does the Constitution mean nothing?
Not to these people.
I love you Murf but the Speaker has rather more power than deciding whether or when to call a bill to the floor for a vote. For example (from Wikipedia): “The speaker’s powers and duties extend beyond presiding in the chamber. In particular, the speaker has great influence over the committee process. The speaker selects nine of the thirteen members of the powerful Committee on Rules, subject to the approval of the entire majority party. The leadership of the minority party chooses the remaining four members. Furthermore, the speaker appoints all members of select committees and conference committees. Moreover, when a bill is introduced, the speaker determines which committee will consider it.”
There are a variety of other functions the Speaker controls as well. He/she oversees the offices of the Clerk, The Sgt. At Arms, the Parliamentarian, the General Counsel and the Inspector General. Oh, and the historian for what that’s worth. A Speaker can replace any or all of these people with someone more to their liking. They also control the video and broadcasting system. (Remember when McCarthy decided to give all those security recordings to Tucker Carlson? You think Jordan would bow to pressure like McCarthy did when word of that got out? I don’t) The Speaker decides (as we were recently reminded when McHenry booted Pelosi and Hoyer from their “hideaway” offices in the Capitol) everyone’s office space, not just in the Capitol but in the adjacent buildings. The Speaker decides whether someone can address the House or a Joint Session of Congress. Remember when Zelenskyy was in DC as part of his trip to the U.N. General Assembly and McCarthy refused to allow him to address a joint session at a time when GOPers are increasingly wanting to cut funding for Ukraine? And even the President has to have an invitation to come to the House to deliver the SOTU each year. I for one can easily imagine a Speaker Jordan refusing to issue an invitation to President Biden. I can also see him shifting Capitol Police resources which could leave Democrats under threat over to Republicans who claim imagined ones. Yes, he’s that much of an asshat.
I could go on, but the main thing about him that scares me is that like Ted Cruz he’s got a messianic vision about shutting down the government. Yes, doing so will bite the GOP in the ass next year but it will also, fairly or not do a number on Biden’s chances as our economy (and the world’s) will tank with even a few weeks of shutdown, especially during the holiday season. The GOP will get the RECESSION on Biden’s watch they’ve been praying for as hard as they prayed for RBG to die before Trump was gone.
He can do a helluva lot of damage. Jordan is the worst possible combination of not knowing what he doesn’t know, not caring and quite willing to use power to “smite” those he doesn’t like. If first thing he pushes through a change in the rules to prevent someone doing to him what Gaetz did to McCarthy removing him for abuses will be a whole lot harder.
I’ve got my fingers crossed that you are spot-on about those GOPers in “Biden districts” and those in districts that will be competitive next year. That instead of only four or five (Jordan can’t afford to lose more than four votes) there are at least twenty or so who will refuse to go along with him being Speaker. Hopefully (probably a forlorn hope) several dozen so there’s enough that Jordan gives up on his gambit. We will know soon enough.
I for one have my fingers crossed.
Even if calling bills to the floor was the speaker’s only duty, that is still a bit of power and the wrong kind for this putz to have. If a speaker can call bills to the floor, it stands to reason he can refuse to call bills to the floor. That can be quite a dangerous power for an insurrectionist to have particularly in about a month or so.
I guess I should have made the point you’ve made myself. Yes, a Speaker can bottle up legislation by refusing to allow it to come up for a vote. Now, as Murster once explained pretty well there IS a process for getting around that, known as a Discharge Petition but it’s not an easy thing to get done. I don’t recall all the particulars off the top of my head but what I do know is that it’s not something that’s been done very often if at all during my lifetime, and I’m an old fart. Someone can and will correct me if I’m wrong about that. If I AM wrong I’d hope someone would speak up.
One of the awful things a Speaker Jordan could and surely would do is to (since a Speaker is empowered to do so) form what Jordan has long wanted – a SELECT Committee to Explore Articles of Impeachment. And it would be empowered to go after more than President Biden. Worse, a Speaker gets to name members of a Select Committee. Sure, Democrats could make recommendations but Jordan could reject them, just as then Speaker Pelosi rejected some of the GOP suggestions for the January 6 Committee, causing then Minority Leader McCarthy to pull ALL of his picks. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger let Pelosi know they’d serve and she trusted them enough to name them to the J6 Committee.
But the bottom line is that a Speaker is more than a figurehead.
Floor vote today is roll call. What kind of literal arm twisting did Gym Boy do over the weekend. “Yeah, he MADE ME vote for him in public from what he said to me over the weekend.” Would they have scheduled a roll call vote today if he didn’t have the votes?
He’s an idiot from a tortuously gerrymandered district so, yes he would.
Well what these republicans can’t figure out is that there are three branches for a reason. And the only person that has any real power is the president. What vexes me is that you have veteran politicians in the house that don’t get it. To me, you get all the headaches with none of the glory. Sure here and there you get little snippets of power but that doesn’t mean shit in the overall scheme of things. Now having jimmy I didn’t see anything in charge would be something of a disaster. But I think even the hardliners would step in and make him toe the line. They ain’t all crazy. Remember that. And they are making 180K for 1/2 year approximately with full coverage insurance for their families. And we are talking all bills paid no matter what on that plan. And did I mention family members like if daughter has a boyfriend they can cover him to if they wish. And all this while being able to have a business or practice law. Well except for idiot Jordan who never passed the bar. That’s why if you are broke when elected, you have to be an idiot if after four years or so you are a millionaire.