After House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) announced he was dropping out of the Speaker of the House race last Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has emerged as a probable contender to fill the slot, especially after Trump endorsed him the next day.
Jordan, a founding member of the ironically named “Freedom Caucus,” is no friend to Democracy and no champion of government. Along with his caucus colleagues, such as Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Scott Perry (R-PA), Jordan is most known for his communications with Trump during the January 6th insurrection, the Ohio State sexual abuse scandal, his efforts to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversaw the Russia-Trump investigation, and his lead role in the House during Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election results.
Jordan is also notorious for his efforts to delay a Trump impeachment deposition that occurred in a secured room, has repeatedly defied House subpoenas to share what he knows about Trump’s role during January 6th, and has lately spun a series of conspiracy theories about the weaponization of the Justice Department and the targeting of Trump. Not to mention false claims contradicted by witnesses involving Hunter Biden’s laptop and Biden’s impeachment proceedings.
For much of his tenure on the Hill, Jordan has been a key player in GOP efforts to hold the government hostage via shutdowns. Examples include in 2013 when he and his cronies sought to defund Obamacare, in 2015 when he pushed to strip funding from Planned Parenthood, and in 2018 when he stood behind Trump’s ridiculous border wall proposal.
The 2016 shutdown over the border wall was the longest shutdown in history and accomplished nothing. The shutdown resulted in 800,000 federal employees being furloughed, 1.3 million federal workers reporting to work with no idea of when the next paycheck would come, and cost the government millions in back pay.
In John A. Boehner’s (R-Ohio) 2021 book, he says this about Jordan: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart — never building anything, never putting anything together.”
According to researchers at the Center for Effective Lawmaking, Jordan is among the least effective members of Congress. As House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) pointed out, “House Republicans have just elected a speaker nominee who in 16 years in Congress hasn’t passed a single bill because his focus has not been on the American people, his focus has been on peddling lies and conspiracy theories and division.”
Jeffries is correct. Jordan and his Freedom Caucus colleagues are unchecked, loose canons, who are uninterested in serving their constituents and even less interested in keeping the government running and preserving Democracy. We need adults in the room, especially with the ongoing war in Ukraine, the recent horrors in Gaza and Israel, and another government shutdown on the horizon. It’s time for Democrats to call Jordan and his GOP supporters out: Instead of uniting America, they want to burn down the house by creating chaos and division.
Americans should keep this in mind in the coming months when going to the voting booth.