As I was perusing the news yesterday and with the coverage of Joe Biden going to Israel for a quick turn-and-burn trip, most of the country possibly could have missed that there was another vote for Speaker of the House yesterday that Congressman Jim Jordan from Ohio actually lost ground on.
This event caught me by surprise and I wrote an article to reflect my thoughts at that moment.
GRUDGE MATCH: House Republicans Once Again Decide on Not Electing a Speaker
From that article…
When Speaker Pro tem Patrick Henry moments ago slammed down the gavel in frustration to end the second attempt to install Jim Jordan of Ohio as Speaker, it signaled the beginning of a full-fledged Grudge Match among House Republicans.
My colleague Teri Christoph may have had a crystal ball earlier when she wrote this piece Jim Jordan May Not Become the Next Speaker, So What’s Next?
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of “Jim-mentum” going into today’s second vote for Speaker of the House.
As we reported yesterday, Jim Jordan fell short of the 217 votes needed to secure the speaker’s gavel, with twenty members of the GOP conference peeling off and casting their votes for other Republicans. Former speaker Kevin McCarthy received a few votes, as did Steve Scalise, who dropped out of the speaker’s race last week, but now doesn’t seem inclined to help Jordan get the votes needed to win.
Some of the anti-Jordan faction of the House GOP made their feelings abundantly clear following yesterday’s vote. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), who is not running for reelection and is perhaps feeling free to stir up some chaos, tweeted this after casting her vote for Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY):
Now, I’m not going to claim that I’m an expert on the chemistry of how the current majority party in the House of Representatives all get along. I’m actually a little stumped that Jim Jordan, who seems to have a decent reputation as far as I know, and who has done a nice job during interrogations on his committees, didn’t win on the second ballot at least. So needless to say, there are some other factors that are working here that are the result of some mistrust and or animosity among the GOP class.
While this is not the best look for the Republicans, I’m firmly in the camp that this is not the worst thing to ever happen in the United States of America. This means that not having a Speaker of the House 13 months out from a national election is not going to just grind everything to a halt. The wheels of the federal government are still in motion, and quite frankly it’s too big of a behemoth to stop totally.
My only criticism — and it has been mild — is that the timing of this is somewhat questionable. This should have been handled back in January, not 13 months before a national election.
Yet once again this is exactly what the founders envisioned: Occasionally there’s going to be gridlock, and that is usually good for the American people.
So the question that naturally arises in my mind is:
Is this what Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz envisioned when he set the wheels in motion to vacate the speaker chair to boot Kevin McCarthy out of the perched view atop the House?
My colleague over at our sister site Townhall, the one and only Kurt Schlichter, asked this question a couple of weeks ago in a piece right here.
From his offering…
WHAT IS UP WITH MATT GAETZ AND I DON’T MEAN HIS HAIR
I don’t know much about Matt Gaetz, except that Vivek Ramaswamy apparently stole his hair for use at the recent debate and that he seems to have a personal problem with Kevin McCarthy. That’s OK with me. I don’t particularly like Kevin McCarthy. If somebody else better came along, I wouldn’t hesitate to dump him. He means nothing to me and I mean nothing to him. Like all politicians, he is a tool – in every sense of the word. He is an object to be used for a specific purpose. It’s nothing personal. I just don’t care about him. I care about winning.
Matt Gaetz is a very shrewd politician from the state of Florida and he did not fall backward into the seat like, let’s say, AOC. He had to fight to win it a couple of terms ago in an increasingly competitive Republican state. So I’m wondering what he envisioned when he made the motion to vacate the Speaker Chair over two weeks ago now.
So far the congressman’s Twitter feed has been a bit devoid of any statements of his view of what is currently going on. He has done some RT’s of some issue-orientated topics.
He did tweet his support of Jim Jordan as Speaker.
Also, he did have some comments about refusing Palestinian refugees into this country with which I 100% agree. Particularly in light of the article I wrote the other day here at RedState where I fear we are a bit too late with figuring out who is already here that means us harm. The Writing Is on the Wall: America Likely to Be Hit Because of the Invasion From Mexico
From that post…
We have had pretty much a wide-open border since January 20, 2021, when Joe Biden took the oath of office to be President of the United States. The administration stopped building the Trump border wall and did everything but send flyers down to Central America and the rest of the world so that they could skip across the Rio Grande and gain entry without authorities checking they are. Of course, this policy was just reversed within the past week, but it’s really a case of too little too late.
So if I have my math correct from Ward’s count above, he quotes about 3.8 million people who have illegally crossed since Scranton Joe took the helm. So let’s do an odd thing and LOWER that number to 3 million people. Now we take those 3 million folks and estimate that approximately one-quarter of one percent have some evil intent; that gives us 7,500 such people in this country illegally. Now they could be just bank robbers or common thieves, possibly some murders or other dastardly things.
If you increase the percentage, you increase the total number, and does that make you feel safe?
What are the chances it is more?
So I’m curious. If this goes on much longer, will he elaborate a bit more on what he thought would happen when he made the motion?
In the meantime, enjoy the mini-drama going on in Washington D.C. where currently they cannot raise your taxes any more than they have being there is gridlock in the nation’s capital.
That is truly never a bad thing.
