Josh Marshall
The Inside Story of How Jim Jordan Broke the Model, Didn’t Become Speaker and Decided That was Fine 
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.
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Jordan CryMore-onistes
Let me try to briefly up date you on where Jim Jordan’s zombie Speakership seems to be. As you know, he lost a Speakership vote Tuesday with 20 Republicans in opposition and then lost another yesterday with 22 votes in opposition. In the second outing, a couple switched to supporting him but more flipped in the other direction. After that he remained committed to forcing a third vote even though there was a strong consensus that his losing ground in the second vote meant his bid was over.
A few assumptions and developments are operating behind the scenes.
Read MoreI said yesterday that this week’s podcast would be coming Thursday, today, not Wednesday. Well, that was fake news. Like I said yesterday, it’s coming tomorrow. But today that means Friday not Thursday. Just to give you a little behind the scenes: Kate is one of our two Capitol Hill reporters. So the gist is we’re a bit hostage at the moment to Jim Jordan’s whims and tantrums as he keeps trying to hold votes in his increasingly fantastical Speakership bid. So bear with us, we’ll have the podcast to you soon.
A new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll finds that 70% of New Jersey residents want Sen. Bob Menendez to resign. Just 16% want him to serve out his term.
This is when you’re holding on to office to trade it for something in a plea bargain.
This week’s podcast will come one day later than usual. So don’t expect it today but it will be on your devices tomorrow afternoon.
Fog of War, Rush to Judgment and the Day After
I have no ability to evaluate grainy videos or make sense of what different blast patterns look like. But I’ve spent several years developing lists of open source intelligence and forensics analysts who are consistently credible. You’ve seen some of this in the various Twitter lists I sometimes post here. Credible doesn’t mean always right, of course. By credible in this case I mean analysts who are highly knowledgeable in one relevant domain, use an empirical framework for analyzing videos, open source data, etc., and have a proven track record of the appropriate level of caution and skepticism in drawing conclusions. Many of these people come out of the Bellingcat world, others got started (at least publicly) analyzing the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts. It’s actually remarkable what people not drawing on any state or property “intelligence” can demonstrate with overlapping provenance-proven video evidence, geolocation, satellite photography, open source weapons information, tracking data and more.
I watched this group very closely overnight (even at the expense of not getting much sleep) as more videos and data emerged about the hospital blast in Gaza and from what I can tell none of these people think the evidence points to an Israeli bomb as the source of the blast.
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Heads I Win, Tails You Lose – Scenes from The Annals of Authoritarianism
We are down to the wire with the Jim Jordan maybe-Speakership. He’s down to a relatively small number of holdouts. But at least some of them seem pretty dug in. If I had to bet (which I never do) I’d say Jordan wears them down and becomes Speaker by the end of the week. But it’s less certain than it was yesterday. He seems to have lost some momentum last night. That may be more ping ponging of news narratives than anything that happened in the real world, the real vote counts. But news narratives and spin have a reality of their own in these cases because what Jordan’s allies were doing yesterday was creating that feeling of a stampede, a rush for the exits where no one wants to be the last out.
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Speaker Jordan’s Toxic Baggage
It’s a bit of an understatement to say Jim Jordan comes to the Speakership with baggage. (Yes, I think it’s almost a given at this point.) But there’s baggage and then there’s baggage. There’s been very, very little discussion of the fact that Jordan is deeply entwined in a college wrestling molestation scandal from his days as the assistant coach of the Ohio State University wrestling team in the 80s and early 90s. It’s been mostly ignored because reporters see it as old news. There was a scandal but it didn’t really go anywhere, the thinking goes. Old news, nothing to see here. But that doesn’t make any sense if you know the details.
First, here’s the short version.
Read MoreYesterday we noted that the latest GOP Speaker wannabe, Jim Jordan and his allies have shifted to mobilizing base MAGA supporters against the substantial number of holdouts who have either claimed they won’t vote for Jordan on the floor of the House or claim they will never vote for him. This morning Jordan seems to be making substantial headway. One key Republican holdout, Mike Rogers of Alabama, now says he’s on board. So does Ken Calvert, who represents a swing district in California.
Read More1 … The US House
In the House GOP battle to seat a new Speaker we have a critical development, which captures or perhaps recapitulates the nature of the battle itself. About 5% of the caucus unseated Kevin McCarthy. Then Steve Scalise won the caucus vote to be Speaker. But a good couple dozen members still wouldn’t vote for him and he quickly dropped out. Then Jim Jordan won the vote and faced the identical problem. But Jordan, his recent establishment turn notwithstanding, is of the Trumpist right. So his supporters are taking a different tack. As the Times reports they’re mobilizing a base-focused press campaign, enlisting right wing media and activists, publishing ‘hit lists’ of recalcitrant members’ phone numbers, threatening primary campaigns. As Trumpist capo Russell T. Vought puts it to the Times, with a lot of history to back him up, the ‘moderates’ will fold because they’re soft. They simply don’t have it in them to deny Jordan on the floor of the House the way Jordan’s strongest allies were ready to do it with McCarthy and Scalise.
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