‘Never Jordan’ Has Started. Coalition Govt Next Or Democracy’s Waterloo?

History is cyclical, just like the seasons. For the past 40 years the GOP has been in a state of decay. Dwight Eisenhower was a fine president, a president for all the people. Perhaps that’s because he started out as a Democrat in Texas and would have ended up at the top of that ticket had the Republicans not drafted him first. Those were different days.

The decline of the party began with Richard Nixon and it ran itself into the ground with the election of Donald Trump. MAGA is a poisonous splinter faction of the GOP and right now it holds the the House of Representatives hostage. The Big Lie is to this generation of Republicans what the Kansas-Nebraska Act was in 1853 to the Whig Party, which collapsed of its own radical pro-slavery weight. Briefly, the law at that time was not to allow slavery above the 36 30 latitude but the Kansas-Nebraska act allowed for settlers to decide whether slavery would be allowed, thereby paving the way for pro-slavery people to settle there and expand, rather than end, slavery. California had become a state in 1850 and it banned slavery, thereby taking a definitive stance on which direction the wild west was going. Slavery was the big issue of that era and it’s what broke the back of the Whig party.

The abolitionists rallied to form a new party and when people like Paul Ryan solemnly intone that the Republican party is the party of Lincoln, they’re not talking about today’s white supremacist mess, they’re talking about the anti-slavery party of the mid-1800’s, built on the ashes of the Whig party, which got too radical and amoral to continue in existence.

Now MAGA has infected the Republican party and it’s the new right-wing radical party. The Big Lie is the issue that the MAGA-diseased Republican party will stand or fall on. Here’s the Never Jordan movement getting rolling.

NeverJordan https://t.co/5XRJTCfkn6

— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) October 13, 2023

Sarah Longwell is with the Bulwark and Republican Accountability did the video. These are Republicans (or new Democrats or Independents) stating what the rest of us know. So can we form a bi-partisan coalition government to get the House Of Representatives moving again? Or does democracy just curl up and die in the House, leaving the Senate and White House to run the government? PoliticusUSA:

Democratic Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told House Republicans that the only way out of their speaker crisis is a coalition government.

Jeffries said, “Democrats stand ready and willing to work with Republican colleagues to find a bipartisan path forward. The only way out is to enter into an enlightened, bipartisan coalition of the willing to get things back on track.”

Among the things that Democrats are looking for in exchange for their votes are an end to the motion to vacate being called by a single member, aid for Ukraine and Israel, and changes in House rules to make it easier for Democrats to pass legislation. There has also been talk among Democrats that they would like a 50/50 power split, limiting the Republican majorities on all committees to one vote, and other rule changes.

If Democrats had the power to pass legislation through the House while in the minority, it would be an unprecedented world for a legislative body that has been strict majority rule essentially since its inception.

In a coalition House, which is a House that is run by a bipartisan majority of Republicans and Democrats, the Democrats will still be in the minority, but the House should be able to govern, and the MAGA reign of dysfunction and obstruction will end.

Republicans are sufficiently worried about this possibility that they are already threatening their members not to work with Democrats to elect a speaker. 

Threats or no threats, something’s got to give. One way or the other the electorate will decide the issue in 2024 and if it goes to that level, then a lot of the people who can’t get things moving now will simply lose their jobs. Jordan has got five no votes against him already. There were 55 votes against him when he had the runoff against Georgia Rep. Austin Scott, Friday. Maybe those 55 could form a coalition with the Democrats? Because let’s face it, if an en masse defection of Republicans goes against Jordan, he cannot win.

Plus, an en masse defection in favor of Jeffries would paradoxically be the GOP taking its power back, by returning to normal governance as allowed to being lured into MAGA crazy time and again. It would give the GOP a cornerstone upon which to rebuild itself. The election of Jeffries is not fanfiction as it was depicted merely a few days ago. The GOP is seriously trying to figure a way out of the mess it’s in. Axios:

What they’re saying: “There’s a sentiment building around [a bipartisan deal] among Democrats and Republicans,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a member of Democratic leadership who represents a swing district, told Axios.

• “We’re open to anything that’s reasonable,” said Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.), a member of the moderate Republican Governance Group. “Bipartisanship is not a sin.”
• Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a perennial bipartisan dealmaker, said “at this point, there are enough Republican and Democrats saying we’ve got to get this fixed.”
• Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said, as the situation devolves, he sees Republicans “absolutely” getting more open to a deal: “Yes, I mean you’re seeing that.”

State of play: With Scalise out of the running, all eyes now turn to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a co-founder of the right-wing Freedom Caucus.

• But some of Jordan’s GOP colleagues are already predicting he’ll suffer the same fate as Scalise. “I think he’s gonna have a math problem as well,” said Mike Garcia (R-Calif.).
• Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said “it’s going to be hard” for Jordan to win.

What we’re hearing: A bipartisan group of roughly ten House lawmakers is quietly holding “very” serious discussions, a moderate Republican involved in the discussions told Axios on the condition of anonymity.

• “The question is who gets you to the largest minority of the majority,” the GOP lawmaker said. “Is it Don Bacon, who gets 20 [GOP] votes and 200 Democrats? Is it French Hill who gets 100 votes from Republicans? And the fewer Republicans, the more dangerous this is – not just politically, but structurally.”
• Another question, the Republican said, is how many speaker candidates need to fail before people soften on the idea: “Kevin, Steve, Jordan, Emmer … how many losses do you have to have to make that an acceptable outcome?”

Between the lines: Congress is unfamiliar with bipartisan coalition governments in the vein of state legislatures and foreign governments – but the House had also never voted to oust a speaker until last Tuesday.

And that right there is the bottom line. This is terra incognita. The old ways aren’t working. They haven’t worked for years. If this GOP had not been so craven and cowardly, it would have done what the GOP of 1974 did and either demanded Trump resign or voted to remove him. They didn’t. They kept kicking the can down the road. Now they are in a cul-de-sac and there is no more road. They’ve got to solve their problem.

And yes, granted, cross-party emotions run hot right now because all the Democrats voted to remove McCarthy. That still stings. Nobody is saying that this is easy. But this stalemate can’t go on forever. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Washington) said, “If this goes on forever, we’ve got to get the country back going.” So some people recognize that yes, this is terra incognita, and they’ve got no guidelines, but they’ve got to move forward somehow. Or else the 435 members of the House will just be sitting there drawing a paycheck for doing nothing, like the Republicans used to accuse the Welfare Queens of old, and meanwhile two wars rage on the other side of the world, and our allies need funding, not to mention that our own government runs out of money in a month.

We don’t need a Big Lie proponent, a conspiracy theorist, the Molester Protector, Jim Jordan running the House of Representatives. We need a coalition government — or some human being that the Republicans can agree upon, alternatively — and we need it stat.

This is the turning point, just as the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the turning point in its day. The Whigs pushed their inhumane agenda too far and they collapsed and a new party was formed from the ruins of the old. We may be witnessing the exact same phenomenon happening here, with the Big Lie and the Big Liar, Trump, being the catalyst that got the GOP to this sink or swim place.

If they’re on terra incognita now and the guardrails are gone, its because they took the plunge off the cliff of madness in 2016. That’s why everything is in pieces on the rocks. So take the rocks and and the debris and build something.