So, Jim Jordan, "legislative terrorist," in John Boehner's immortal words, is now running for Speaker of the House. And he is a legitimate contender. Why? The party has gone crazy. He aided and abetted a sexual predator at Ohio State. Fine. "Allegedly." (Really, he's guilty...) And aside from that, he's off his rocker. For the party of Roy Moore, what's not to love?
Will it happen? Like I said, don't discount this. Let's just work through the mechanics, though. PredictIt currently puts the odds of Ryan making it through 2018 at 4-1. It is highly unlikely that anything happens to displace Ryan before the end of the year because there is no reason for anyone to force him out. There is no gain. Congress isn't doing anything, so there is nothing to accomplish through a coup. Why go through the rigamarole? Unless someone digs up a picture of Paulie performing CPR to rescue someone who just crossed the Rio Grande, or some other wingnut apostasy, he's safe through 2018, and what are the chances of that?
Then, there's November. In order for Jordan's campaign to really matter, the GOP would need to hold the House. Who runs the House after the midterms? Give a slight edge to the Democrats right now. How slight? I put it at about 60-40 right now, which is slightly closer than the betting at PredictIt. So, within that 40%, what happens? That's where you have the battle between McCarthy, Scalise, Jordan, and whoever the hell else throws their hood in the ring. Oops! Did I type, "hood?" I meant, "hat." Oopsies! You know, I really should go back and edit that. Bad me! Bad blogger!
Anyway, remember that the way these things work is that the Speaker is elected by majority vote in the chamber, not plurality vote. The majority party holds an informal vote to see who has the most support, the rest of the candidates drop out, and then there is a formal chamber vote, and the majority party votes for their chosen candidate. There can be a few protest votes, as long as there aren't enough defectors to screw it up. What happens, though, if Jordan is just a douchebag?
Scratch that. We know Jordan is a douchebag. What happens if Jordan's douchebaggery plays out as follows. He tells his little munchkins to vote only for him and nobody else. If they are sufficiently obstinate, Jordan could become Speaker by forcing the rest of the party to submit to the will of the Freedom Caucus. It has happened before...
Or, Jordan uses his candidacy to screw over McCarthy. The Freedom Caucus is why we wound up with Ryan! Remember that McCarthy was next in line after Boehner, and everyone just assumed that McCarthy would get it. Well, I didn't, and I wasn't even allowed to include my skepticism in a Monkey Cage post on the topic! So, Jordan could use this as a rallying move to get the Freedom Caucus voting as a bloc against McCarthy, and turning towards Scalise, who has described himself as David Duke without the baggage. Quite a trick, since I basically think of Duke as Samsonite for racists, in which case the set of non-baggage-portioned Duke is an empty set, but nobody intelligent ever said Scalise was intelligent.
The thing about Jordan's campaign, then, is to remember that the majority rule for speakership, combined with the blind loyalty of the Freedom Caucus means he can mess things up just by being in the race. What effect does that have? Obviously, that depends on whether or not the GOP holds the House, but the fact that Jordan even matters is a testament to how crazy that party has gotten.
His campaign slogan might as well be, "at least I wasn't the one to touch 'em!" That's better than Hastert, right? These people...
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