Last Sunday, when Jake Tapper asked Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw— who wasn’t one of the 139 House Republicans who tried to overturn the election results— how he could support Gym Jordan, one of the leaders of those 139, Crenshaw said, “If I held that grudge, I wouldn’t have friends in the Republican Conference, because a lot of them did that.” Yesterday Crenshaw was one of the 200 Republicans who voted to make Jordan— who still insists Trump won the election— speaker.
Some Republicans in swing districts refused to— at least yesterday. I suspect some will come around today. But yesterday, swing district Republicans who voted against Jordan included 4 from New York, one from Nebraska, one from Oregon, one from Michigan… but not one from the state with the most swing districts, California. California’s 7 swing districts are represented by Kevin Kiley, John Duarte, David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Young Kim, Ken Calvert and Michelle Steel and all of them jeopardized their reelections by voting for an extremist who had been accurately described by Michael Gerson in 2019, as “guided by bigotry, seized by conspiracy theories, dismissive of facts and truth, indifferent to ethics, contemptuous of institutional norms and ruthlessly dedicated to the success of a demagogue.” Here’s the differential between Trump and Biden in each of their districts in 2020, the negative number representing a Trump win and the positive number a Biden win.
Kevin Kiley (CA-03) -1.8%
John Duarte (CA-13) +10.9%
David Valadao (CA-22) +12.9%
Mike Garcia (CA-27) +12.4%
Young Kim (CA-40) +1.9%
Ken Calvert (CA-41) -1.1%
Michelle Steel (CA-45) +6.2
Voters in these 7 districts rejecting Trump in 2020 are unlikely to have reasons since then to embrace him in 2024. Jordan, endorsed and promoted by Trump, is his man— and now so are these 7 Republican incumbents. Yesterday, after the first ballot, L.A.Times columnist Mark Barabak wrote that they voted against the good of the country and urged his readers to “remember their names.” And he went beyond just those 7— to include Darrell Issa, Kevin McCarthy, Jay Obernolte and Tom McClintock, all California Republicans but Doug LaMalfa, who voted for McCarthy, putting, in his words “tribal loyalty above the country’s best interests” to heedlessly back an “election denier, Jan. 6 instigator, political pyromaniac…”
He especially singled out the 5 he noted are “running next year in some of the country’s most competitive reelection contests: Ken Calvert. John Duarte. Mike Garcia. Michelle Steel. David Valadao. Each had a chance to stand up for what is honest and right. Each failed to do so.”
Jordan lost the first round of voting on Tuesday, thus sparing the nation, in this time of war abroad and strife at home, the calamity that could ensue if the gavel falls into his weaselly grasp.
For now, anyway. Another vote is scheduled for Wednesday.
Memories of Jan. 6, 2021, the most grievous attack on our democracy since the Civil War, may have faded in the past many months. It’s easy with that passage of time and the fog of partisan conflict to lose moral clarity. So here’s a refresher: Jordan not only condoned President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and reject its legitimate outcome but actively plotted with the pouty president to do so.
The result was the deadly assault on Congress and first attempted coup in the nation’s history.
And the reward for Jordan’s treachery is to elevate him to the speakership?
Duarte, Garcia and the rest must think so, perversely enough.
There are plenty of good reasons to oppose Jordan’s bid.
He faces credible allegations he ignored the sexual abuse of college athletes while working as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University. (When New York Rep. Elise Stefanik referred in her nominating speech to Jordan’s “strategic, scrappy” leadership “on the wrestling mat” there were audible gasps inside the House chamber.)
His legislative record is not only barren— in 16 years in Congress, he has never had a bill signed into law— it’s replete with acts of political sabotage.
That’s not some partisan attack.
John Boehner, a former Republican House speaker, called his fellow Ohioan a “legislative terrorist” and said he had never seen “a guy who spent more time tearing things apart— never building anything, never putting anything together.”
But setting aside those glaring defects, what is singularly, unequivocally disqualifying is Jordan’s attempts, at Trump’s beckoning, to subvert an election that even Trump officials called the most secure in American history. All the talk of voter fraud, ballot-stuffing and other alleged subterfuge— which Jordan has widely promoted— is pure bunk.
Anyone arrogant enough to substitute his preference for the expressed will of voters and reckless enough to promote such blatant lies should come nowhere close to the power of the speakership.
Just imagine: If Jordan prevails and lasts long enough in the position— a dubious proposition given Republicans’ penchant for political cannibalism— he would preside over certification of the 2024 election. That would allow for all kinds of tampering and mischief.
Instead of a one-off, Jan. 6 might just be a bad taste of things to come, with the peaceful transfer of powe— the foundation of our election system and an exemplar to the world— becoming just another artifact of a political time gone by.
Republicans can do right Wednesday by snuffing Jordan’s bid for speaker, with help from California’s GOP delegation. But that seems highly improbable.
Apart from Calvert, Steel and others mentioned above, the California GOP lawmakers who supported Jordan included Reps. Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley, Young Kim, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Doug LaMalfa, who voted for McCarthy in protest of his removal two weeks ago, said he will back Jordan on Wednesday’s second ballot.
It’s unlikely that McCarthy— should he seek reelection in 2024— Issa, LaMalfa, McClintock or Obernolte will be defeated. Each represents a reliably Republican district.
Kiley and Kim face contests that are at least somewhat competitive. Four lawmakers representing Central Valley and Southern California districts that Joe Biden carried— Duarte, Garcia, Steel and Valadao— are more vulnerable.
In recent days there has been lots of talk among Jordan supporters of being “team players,” as if partisan loyalty trumps (forgive the pun) what is best for the country.
And there has been all sorts of faux urgency about the need to elect a speaker so the House, leaderless since McCarthy’s defenestration, can get back to business.
But that only speaks to the seemingly limitless capacity of House Republicans to take a bad thing and make it worse. When you drive a car into a ditch, do you summon an auto crusher to pull it out?
Come 2024, remember the names and misplaced loyalties of those California lawmakers who voted to install an insurrection-backing, integrity-lacking Trump toady as head of the body that calls itself the People’s House.
Hold them to account.
Stand up for first principles.
Stop the crazy.
