Jordan-the-bomb-thrower might ultimately win the speakership of the House. But you have to believe Republicans know better than to buy his revamp.
Rep. Jim Jordan has undergone quite the rush makeover in his back-from-the-dead attempt to become House speaker, second in line to the presidency. It wasn’t enough, however, for him to get elected on a first ballot Tuesday. He’ll need to do more.
The Trump henchman once condemned as a career-long “legislative terrorist” by another Ohio Republican, former Speaker John A. Boehner, has been passing himself off as a virtual Solon to win the support of dozens of Republicans who only last week voted against him.
The supposed statesman in waiting still eschews a suit coat in the Capitol Hill hallways as he rushes from closed-door courtships to strategy meetings. That’s hardly a sign of disrespect for the institution compared to Jordan’s real sin: complicity with Donald Trump in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that ravaged the Capitol and democracy itself. But there have been changes: Jordan no longer speaks in a mile-a-minute, hand-slashing rant. His voice is measured and his body still, befitting the new persona.
More important than his style is Jordan’s apparent substantive change: He has reportedly assured Republicans that he’s sworn off government shutdowns, and that as speaker he’d allow House votes on the must-pass annual spending bills and aid for Ukraine as well as Israel. In a letter to House Republicans on Monday, he vowed to take the lead on passing “responsible legislation to fund our government and support our military.” (“Responsible” is doing a lot of work there.)
In other words, the nine-term “lawmaker” who has never gotten a law passed and only focused on “tearing things apart” — another Boehner critique — promises to actually govern. Jordan, who in 2015 and 2018 pushed out first Boehner and then another Republican speaker, Paul D. Ryan, because they compromised too much, now clamors for the party to unify behind him.
