Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, still faces an uphill climb to the House speakership, with at least 10 to 20 Republican members who oppose his nomination, CBS News has learned, based on background conversations over the weekend with six key House Republicans and more than a dozen sources familiar with the deliberations.
"At least 10 to 20," one of the House Republicans told CBS News on Sunday, while another added that that Jordan's support has grown incrementally in recent days but remains soft.
While Jordan's confidants remain optimistic that he can get to the necessary 217 votes Tuesday, when the House is scheduled to bring a vote to the floor, several who are more critical of Jordan privately insisted this weekend that at about a dozen Republicans remain unwilling to support him, due to their frustrations over how Rep. Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, was treated during his speaker bid and their simmering anger over the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. They also are wary of whether Jordan can handle the intensity of the challenges facing Congress in the coming months.
As one of those partisan grievance issues, I’m terrified of that possibility
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, but I wouldn't be too worried.
First, he's going to be focused on aid to Ukraine and Israel. And while the party's stance on aid to those countries may be an issue in and of itself, that problem isn't unique to Jim Jordan, and we'd have the same issues regardless of who is speaker right now.
Then he's got the debt ceiling thing to figure out. Again, there's plenty of fuckery to be had, but that would be the case regardless of who is speaker.
And then after that, it's going to be full-blown "weaponization of government" hearings, Biden's so-called "impeachment", doing everything (not actually) in his power to shut down Trump's criminal trials, and then running his own re-election campaign.
This is all why I say they won't have any time to do any real damage. Somewhat ironically, the only real reason they won't be able to do much real damage is because he'll be too busy focusing on "problems" of their own creation: Support for Israel and Ukraine, the debt ceiling, "Weaponization of Government", Biden's "impeachment, and their bending the knee to Trump are all "crises" 100% invented by the GOP. If they weren't going to be so tied up solving stupid problems of their own creation, then I'd be more concerned.
He's a Russian asset, what makes you think he's going to be working on anything. He and the Bannon crowd want to burn it all down.
That's exactly my point.
If it were any sane speaker, aid packages to those countries wouldn't even be an issue. The bill probably would have passed and the supplies already on their way to Israel and Ukraine before the ink even dries. Jordan and his ilk are going to be facing constant pressure to sign off on aid, and he's going to come up with every excuse he can think of not to give it to them. And with all the pressure and focus on trying to get him to pass an aid package, he won't have time to do as much domestic damage.
Don't be so sure, Trump was an incompetent idiot that found people to work on the border wall, banning Muslims and clearing people's visas. I'm sure Jordan has allies that would work on the domestic agenda.
Trump was able to do that because he already had a celebrity following, and a whole bunch of vultures saw a whole bunch of money in building that wall.
Jordan does not have the following or the charisma that Trump has, and there isn't a whole hell of a lot of money to be made trying to figure out what else is on Hunter Biden's laptop or why Twitter suspended one of their accounts again. If he had the support even within his own party, he'd be speaker already.
This powerful people using Jordon to get what they want, this isn't a common people thing.
Yes. 100%. Every word. Thank you for saying it out loud.