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There’s an aspect of the Jim Jordan Speaker Drama that hasn’t gotten enough attention. It’s really the central element of the story. Over the years I’ve argued that the post-2010 GOP caucus operates by a consistent set of informal rules. What looks like drama and dysfunction is actually in its own way a very stable and functional system.
The congressional party is controlled and run by the hard right minority variously called the Tea Party or Freedom Caucus. But they are a bit too hot for national public consumption. They also rely on the idea that their far right policy agenda has broad public support but is held back by a corrupt/bureaucratic establishment. For both of these reasons a system was developed in which this far right group runs the caucus, but from the background, while it is nominally run by a mainstreamish Republican leader. Under John Boehner, Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy this basic dynamic remained more or less the same. It works for everybody because the Freedom Party calls the shots while the party maintains broad electoral viability via figureheadish leadership.
Meanwhile the stresses created by the gap between party goals and electoral viability is played out in psychodrama between a cluster of self-styled rebels and the beleaguered leader of the moment. This feature is more important than it looks. The big Freedom Caucus beef with McCarthy was that he couldn’t take the far right legislation they jammed through the House and magically force the Senate to pass it and Biden to sign it. The true believers are thus in a perpetual state of being betrayed by a menagerie of RINOs and other softies who make up the ever-shifting definition of ‘the establishment,’ a fact that keeps the conservative media fundraising water wheel chugging forward.
If the Freedom Caucus took over caucus management directly they would quickly come face to face with not being able to pass their favored bills. If they did they would get shut down in the Senate or by the President. They would face directly that their favored legislation is simply not very popular. The system I described above may look like chaos. And from the perspective of effective government it is. But from a political perspective it serves every player’s needs in an effective and stable way.
By trying for the Speakership, Jordan was breaking with this model. That’s probably the best way to understand the ensuing breakdown. Just as I was writing this post, Jordan finally decided not to hold a third vote, in which he was certainly going to lose even more votes. He’ll get behind the effort to add powers to the portfolio of Speaker pro tem Patrick McHenry through the end of the calendar year. [ed.note: This plan subsequently imploded over a period of about 90 minutes leaving the House GOP caucus at a complete loss as to how to proceed. More on this in ed.note at the bottom of this post.]
Jordan didn’t come up with this idea. Others did and they’ve been begging them to take it for at least 48 hours. But it’s a very smart move for Jordan (which is itself pretty stunning and raises its own questions). It accomplishes several key things. 1) He gets to stop embarrassing himself by holding vote after vote and losing more votes each time. 2) He gets to say he never lost. It’s just a delay. 3) It blocks everyone else out. What wraps one, two and three together is 4) He remains Speaker designee. The GOP caucus voted for its choice for Speaker and that guy is Jim Jordan. There’s not going to be another caucus Speaker election, at least not until January and for Jordan hopefully never. In this alternative reality, Jordan was chosen to be Speaker. It’s done. They just haven’t had the election on the floor to finalize it. In a basic sense he already is Speaker. He’s been running the caucus since late last week. He’s choosing when there’s going to be a vote or not going to be a vote.
In practice this creates an entirely novel parliamentary leadership structure. The majority has a whip, a majority leader and a Speaker designee, Jim Jordan. Then there’s a largely ministerial medium-term, super-sized but not quite full sized Speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry, who presumably will take his cues from the head of the caucus, Jim Jordan. It really amounts to not having a Speaker for the next three months and the GOP caucus passing a rule deciding that that’s fine. Think of Jordan as viable late-term Speaker fetus, who’s just about ready to go but can’t manage to be born, at least not yet. That can totally work for him, perhaps indefinitely, if he’s really able to call the shots from the womb.
[ed.note: About 90 minutes after Jordan rolled out this plan it made first contact with the House GOP caucus and blew apart into a million pieces. As I write at roughly 2:30 on Thursday afternoon the plan is absolutely dead. At least for the moment there doesn’t seem to be any idea of a possible next step. It was probably doomed all along – see the main point of this post: the model exists for a reason. But Jordan and his lieutenants at least made the concept far too explicit. They made it crystal clear it made him de facto Speaker with no vote at all. And here we are.]