Whoo boy.
I thought this didn’t really matter. I thought this might even be fun to watch. I thought, most of all, that Jim Jordan was the guy least likely to have enough votes to get himself into the Speaker’s chair, I really did, because large swaths of the House GOP rank and file despise Jim Jordan. They’d rather a baboon had the spot, or maybe one of those big old orangutans, they seem nice, there might be one at the Smithsonian National Zoo they could draft. Asked during a closed session whether they could support the guy, we’re told, something like 55 of them practically threatened to blow their own brains out right there on the House floor if the bastard was so much as nominated, that’s how much they like the hapless, dim-bulb Chair of the hilarious Weaponization of Government Committee. Never Jordan!! Death first!! I wasn’t sure I believed those reports, I mean, only 55? Anyway, Jim seemed out of the running. Honestly, I thought the more plausible scenario was that they’d consider the alternatives, and re-install Kevin McCarthy, who’s probably dumb enough to let them.
Then, however, came the campaign of threats, bullying, and general MAGA skullduggery, mightily assisted by Rupert Murdoch’s own Sean Fucking Hannity, the prick, and the cowards started to waver. Oh, horrors! Unless they fell into line, Hannity might say nasty things about them on the air! Donald could post mean tweets on his faux-Twitter website! They could get primaried! Whatever could they do? The matter’s still not decided, as I write this, but on Jordan’s first attempt this afternoon, those willing to stand up and vote their conscience had been whittled down to just 20. Many of the hold-outs are probably just hanging on until they can extract some more goodies out of Jacketless Jim, like they did before when hapless Kevin was putting himself through the wringer, and the notion that there might be somebody, anybody, within the gutless rabble who’d stick to their guns in the face of all that bribery and extortion has, God have mercy, started to look like a little too much to hope for.
Just as an aside, any notion that Fox News is actually involved in something akin to journalism should now be impossible for anybody to maintain, what with one of their prime time darlings manning the phones and making threats on behalf of Donald Trump in an effort to influence who becomes Speaker of the House. Time was, this would have been such an absurdly gross breach of journalistic ethics that nobody would even have been able to imagine it, much less shrug indifferently upon seeing it. For the love of God, in 2011 Keith Olberman, then hosting the most highly-rated show on the network, was almost booted off MSNBC for making unpublicized contributions to a few Democrats’ election campaigns. It was against the rules. There was huge controversy. They suspended him, and his transgression was probably a factor in his subsequent termination. Journalists could voice their opinions, but beyond that weren’t allowed to take sides, or have any sort of involvement in the matters upon which they were reporting. Full stop. No exceptions.
Seems like a thousand years ago, doesn’t it?
Anyway, here we sit, waiting to find out if one of the most execrable low-lifes in American political history gets to be second in line to the Presidency. Let’s not mince any words here: Jim Jordan is a worthless, malodorous mound of sentient pig droppings. In his entire 16-year career in Congress, he’s never sponsored a piece of legislation that became law. When he’s not in front of the cameras perpetuating the Big Lie, he just sits on committees, putting the screws to decent people in the witness chairs while bellowing disinformation. Prior to this, quite famously, he turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse of athletes under his charge as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University. He’s as short of human decency as he is of accomplishments.
He was always a Freedom Caucus dickhead, but nowhere near so prominent as he became after Trump took over the party. Talk about jumping on the bandwagon! When Donald got elected, our Jimmy became one of America’s most unwavering MAGA cultists, knowing no other loyalty, not to the Constitution, not to Country, and not to any God but Trump. He’s carried Donald’s water all along the way, and you better believe he was hip deep in the coup plotting prior to the January insurrection. There’s no doubt he knew all about what was coming, and helped orchestrate it, which was obvious to many even in the midst of the assault – it was all Liz Cheney could do to refrain from killing him on the spot, as he tried to help her escape the besieged House chamber – and you know it’s true, even without any of the other evidence, because the first thing he did after the coup failed was ask Donald for a pardon. It must have seemed unlikely, at the time, that the Department of Justice would just leave him alone for his part in the calamity. Why do you think he defied the subpoena of the January 6 Committee – outright contempt of Congress that should have gotten him in legal hot water too, and certainly disqualifies him for the Speaker’s position in any hypothetically sane universe – and why do you think he jabbers incoherently when any reporter asks him about his communication with Trump on the day of the coup?
He was in it up to his neck, which means we may be on the cusp of watching an insurrectionist, a goddam traitor, and an unabashed tool of The Donald, banging the gavel in the House, and sitting behind the President when he delivers the State of the Union. It’s enough to make the most jaded cynic puke his everloving guts out. Jordon belongs in a cell right next to his buddies in the Proud Boys, not in a position of honour at the top of the Article I branch of of the U.S. Government.
Besides which, not that it matters in the slightest any more, he’s really a moron. No word of exaggeration. Jim Jordan is a stupid, stupid man, and basic competence, at anything, isn’t really his thing.
I was telling myself that while a stint by Jordan in the Speaker’s chair would be a terrible thing to behold, it wouldn’t really matter much, because any ridiculous MAGA legislation he might shepherd through the House would arrive in the Senate with the toe tag already attached. Yet the Speaker controls what comes to the floor, which might have serious consequences for funding for Ukraine, since, incredibly, MAGA wants Russia to win its evil war of aggression. Moreover, as Rachel Maddow reminded me last night, there’s a significant possibility that it will still be Jordan at the helm when it comes time for the House to certify the next election. Who doubts he’d pull whatever levers he could to make Donald President again, no matter that he once again lost the election?
I hadn’t thought that far ahead, to tell you the truth. Rachel really kicked me in the gentle bits with that one.
Oh well. Maybe it won’t come to that. Nothing is certain in these things. Maybe Donald isn’t even the nominee, for some reason, or maybe, if he is, he drops dead on the campaign trail. Maybe Jordan, having grabbed the poisoned chalice, doesn’t last any longer than McCarthy did, and isn’t in any position to exert decisive influence come January, 2025. Or maybe the frickin’ idiot doesn’t even get to be Speaker in the first place. It’ll only take a handful of the remaining 20 holdouts to thwart him, just five stalwart souls, if there are that many in the House GOP. Those five could even vote for Jeffries instead of saying “present” when their names are called, and a Dem would be Speaker. You can’t blame a fellow for dreaming, right?
Meanwhile, as the world burns, and various crises threaten to spiral out of control, the American government is all but paralyzed while this ridiculous struggle for the speakership drags on. Congressional action is needed, urgently, on funding for Ukraine, support for Israel, and yes, again, and very soon, keeping the whole government from shutting down.
I probably don’t need to add that nothing even remotely like the current clusterfuck in Congress has ever happened in America. Everything the Republicans do is unprecedented, these days, as the GOP keeps proving that things can indeed always get worse.
the needlefish 