Republicans Started a Civil War They Don’t Know How to End

The third loser in less than three weeks. Photo: Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images

House Republicans haven’t been terribly successful at many things this year. They struggled to keep the government open and to keep the United States from defaulting on its debt. They’ve even struggled at times on basic votes to keep the chamber functioning. But they have been very good at one thing: regicide.

On Friday, Republicans dethroned Jim Jordan as their designated Speaker, making him the third party leader to be ousted this month. First, there was Kevin McCarthy, who required 15 different ballots to even be elected Speaker and was removed from office by a right-wing rebellion at the beginning of October. Then, after a majority of Republicans voted to make McCarthy’s No. 2, Steve Scalise, his successor, a number of Republicans announced that they, too, would torpedo his candidacy and back Jordan instead. Finally, once Republicans finally turned to Jordan as their candidate, the largest rebellion yet blocked him from becoming Speaker. After losing three successive votes on the floor, the firebrand lost an internal vote to keep his position as Speaker designate on Friday.

After two weeks of Republican chaos, the House is frozen without a leader, imperiling both the prospect of keeping the U.S. government open with a funding deadline less than a month away, and supplying U.S. allies Israel and Ukraine with aid to shore up their defenses. Next week, Republicans will attempt yet again to elect a Speaker, as the party explores new, previously unimaginable levels of division, chaos, and bitterness.

In particular, the fight over Jordan’s candidacy has opened new wounds in a party full of them. Many of the same rebels who held McCarthy hostage in January were also those who helped block Scalise in order to hold the position open for their favored candidate, Jordan. But they soon got a dose of their own medicine from Establishment Republicans outraged over the gambit. This led to a perfect storm for Jordan that united members concerned about his hard-right beliefs with those embittered that the hard right had blackmailed the conference by sinking anyone but Jordan.

“My vote counted less than everyone else’s vote,” said Don Bacon, an anti-Jordan moderate from Nebraska. “In America, all of our votes count the same.” As Pat Fallon of Texas, who backed Jordan on the floor, described it, “If you let 20 people run your conference when there’s 221 members, it gets the other members a little antsy and a little angry.”

The hard feelings got worse after an aggressive lobbying campaign from right-wing influencers that led to a tirade of angry calls and even death threats to members opposed to Jordan’s candidacy. It also didn’t help that his lobbying campaign lacked a certain personal touch. As one person familiar with his efforts to woo dissidents put it, “The more outreach he does, the worse it gets for him.”

“It used to be I was voting for Kevin McCarthy,” said Carlos Gimenez of Florida. “Now I’m not voting for Jim Jordan.”

Unlike many of those who blocked McCarthy’s effort to be Speaker at the start of the year, Jordan’s opponents didn’t want any policy concessions or powerful perches in exchange for their vote. When Jordan held a last-ditch meeting with holdouts on Thursday, it was clear negotiation was impossible. “When he met with a number of us, he asked us what we wanted,” Gimenez said. “We don’t want anything.”

Despite seemingly impossible odds, Jordan was reluctant to drop out. He held a press conference Friday morning, where he told a long anecdote about the Wright Brothers from his native Ohio before yet again losing on the floor of the House. At that point, Republicans assembled yet again in a closed, windowless room to decide his fate. Cell phones were placed outside to prevent leaks, and carts of pizza were wheeled in to stave off hunger. While only 25 Republicans openly voted against Jordan on the floor, 112 cast a secret ballot for him to drop out. They saw no path forward for him. “There’s no more runway,” said Fallon. “We’re at the end of it.”

The mounting problem is not simply that Republicans are unable to elect a Speaker, but also that the House can’t function without one. The chamber’s rules require a Speaker to be elected for even the most basic functions, like voting on legislation. Although Patrick McHenry, a Republican from North Carolina, is currently serving as a placeholder in the role under a post-9/11 provision to ensure continuity of government, he has insisted he has no power to do anything save preside over the election of a permanent Speaker. Proposals to formally empower McHenry until a Speaker is elected have been rejected by Republicans so far.

So, the question is who would be next on the chopping block. “We took our leader out, we took our second-in-command out, we took our grassroots folk hero out,” Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told reporters before Jordan’s ouster. “Eventually, we’re going to run into an attrition problem. That’s unsustainable.” Already, a host of potential candidates were popping up to mount their own bid next week despite the unpleasant and unstable nature of the position.

Jake Ellzey of Texas consistently voted for his colleague Mike Garcia of California on the floor this week in order to block Jordan — they flew jet fighters together in the Navy. “I’d take a bullet for that guy. I love the guy,” Ellzey said. Why then would he subject such a close friend to such a grim fate? He conceded, “There is a duality there.”