Team Players

On Monday, former Paul Ryan aide Brendan Buck marveled at the absurdity of the latest House speakership drama. “The ‘Be a team player and support Jim Jordan’ movement is really something else,” he joked.

Jordan is the new Republican nominee for speaker, a candidacy made possible by the audacity of his populist allies in refusing to be team players themselves. First, a small bloc led by Matt Gaetz joined with Democrats to wrest the gavel from Kevin McCarthy, thwarting the will of more than 200 Republicans. Then, after Steve Scalise defeated Jordan in a vote of the Republican conference, another bloc of Jordanaires refused to bow to the will of the majority by supporting Scalise in a vote of the full House.

Jordan needed two separate instances of minority rule to lift him to the top of the conference. Now that he’s there, he expects party loyalty—being a team player—to kick in.

On Friday, after he won the latest vote to nominate a speaker, House Republicans were polled via secret ballot on whether they’d support Jordan in a vote of the full House. No less than 55 said no, some out of anger at how Scalise had been treated, others out of disgust at the thought of a rabble-rousing insurrectionist kook ascending to the speakership. That left Jordan in the same situation in which Scalise had found himself days earlier.

But instead of stepping aside, Jordan turned up the heat. He and his allies launched a public pressure campaign over the weekend aimed at the 55 holdouts, vowing to force an on-the-record vote of the full House on Tuesday and dare his Republican enemies to risk primary challenges by opposing him. Some of the sleaziest influencers in populist right-wing media dutifully carried his message forth, including the MAGA super PAC known as Fox News:

Even Matt Gaetz, if you can believe it, took to needling some of the Jordan refuseniks for … defying the will of the House Republican majority.

Jordan had initially opposed holding any House floor votes on a speaker candidate unless and until that candidate made it to 217 in a vote of the Republican conference, behind closed doors. Now that he’s at the brink of power, he’s ditched that team-player position and is running a de facto intimidation effort in broad daylight against the holdouts to twist their arms.

The “Be a team player and support Jim Jordan” movement really is something.

But it’s not as incoherent as it sounds. House Republicans are team players. It’s just that different factions have different understandings of which team they play for.

Most members of the conference play for Team GOP. The populist bloc does not. They’ve pledged their allegiance to Donald Trump and his apostles, like Jordan, not to the Republican Party or to conservatives like Scalise. And they know Republican primary voters are on their side, which is why Jordan is eager to use the prospect of an on-the-record House vote against his opponents.

It’s the Republican hostage crisis of the past eight years in miniature. Populists who feel no loyalty to the party are taking it over and are leveraging the loyalty other Republicans do feel to the party to entrench their power. The definition of the “team” changes as populist interests require. Non-populists are too partisan or too cowardly to do anything about it.

Nothing new there. What I can’t figure out is why a moderate House Republican who represents a district won by Joe Biden in 2020 would want to remain part of either team. What’s in it for them?

It won’t surprise you to learn that Jordan’s pressure campaign is working.

The two most outspoken Republican opponents of his speakership bid over the weekend were Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama and Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri. Both represent red districts, slightly so in Wagner’s case and decidedly so for Rogers. As recently as last week, Wagner was ripping Jordan for his “disgraceful” behavior toward Scalise, and Rogers was floating a deal with Democrats to elect a speaker in lieu of electing Jordan.

On Monday, they both came around to endorsing him. Maybe he promised them something privately for their votes as part of his alleged plan to unite the conference. (Since when does Jim Jordan compromise?) But more likely it was simple electoral math that did it. In their anxiety and disgust at the thought of a Speaker Jordan, they forgot that primary voters won’t reward them for having been team players for the party when Scalise was the nominee for speaker; they’ll punish them for not having been team players for the party once the populist, Jordan, had become the GOP’s nominee.

And you know what? I’m okay with that.

Last year, our own Steve Hayes hosted The Bulwark’s Tim Miller on The Dispatch Podcast, and their conversation turned into a squabble over the ethics of working in the Trump administration. It was good that decent, responsible people went to work for Trump, Steve argued. We needed them in positions of power to check his worst impulses.

It was not good, Miller countered. They lent a veneer of respectability to Trumpism that Trump didn’t deserve and they weren’t as scrupulous about checking his impulses as we would have liked. January 6 happened, didn’t it? If American voters had gotten a hard dose of MAGA government in all of its incompetent vindictive glory, without the guardrails erected by his more conscientious aides, maybe we wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of a second Trump presidency now.

I’m on Team Steve in that dispute because it involves the executive branch. I’d rather have competent, civic-minded people in proximity to command of the military and the nuclear arsenal than populist wackos. If the price of having Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff instead of Mike Flynn is occasionally saving Trump from himself, I’ll pay it.

The legislative branch is different, especially when the government is divided between the parties.

Because the risk of truly dangerous legislative action is limited (especially now that the debt ceiling is squared away for a while), I lean toward Team Miller in that case. The worse, the better. If the Republican “coalition” is now essentially a matter of populists throwing tantrums and making threats until the rest of the party gives them what they want, the leadership of the House Republican majority should reflect that. No more hiding behind pseudo-respectable traditional conservatives like Kevin McCarthy. Let the American people get what they voted for.

Jordan 2023: Embrace the disgrace.

One of two things will happen with Speaker Jordan in charge, possibly both. He will, in fact, be forced to compromise with Democrats and RINOs in order to move legislation, forcing a hard reckoning among populist Republicans. Some will excuse and defend his dealmaking for the same cultish reasons that they excused and defended Trump’s, but others will feel disillusioned and turn against him. They’ll quarrel.

It’s good for America when populists are at each other’s throats.

Alternatively, Jordan will be the same guy as speaker that he’s always been and will refuse to compromise. He’ll insist on a lengthy shutdown next month. He’ll try to tank funding for Ukraine, sparking angry threats in the House about discharge petitions. He’ll piss off swing voters in a dozen different ways before Election Day next fall, especially once they’re reminded that he was a key co-conspirator in the coup plot of late 2020 and early 2021.

In short, Jordan’s leadership will either domesticate the tiger (somewhat) or become a running Democratic attack ad against Trumpism in 2024. 

Or, Speaker Jordan might end up being pulled in both directions and end up trying to muddle through. He might make a deal with Democrats to keep the government open in order to satisfy moderate Republicans, at the price of infuriating his base. And then he might turn around and make it up to populists by impeaching Joe Biden, enraging moderates.

It will be morbid fun watching the “purity caucus” try to cope with having power finally thrust upon it after so many years of carping from the sidelines about the sinister establishment. They’ve been the de facto Republican establishment for years and enjoyed many of the perquisites of that status. It’s high time they assumed some of the responsibilities. As gratifying as it would be on a human level to see Jordan humiliated by losing a vote on the House floor, populists never truly “lose.” Each defeat is simply further evidence that they’re martyrs to a swampy “uniparty” who would assuredly lead the country to glory if ever given a chance to do so.

Well, it seems they’re finally going to get that chance. You and I will enjoy rubbernecking.

But I would not enjoy it if I were a House Republican representing a swing district. On the contrary, it might have me asking myself this question: I’m willing to be a “team player,” but do I have more in common with Team Jordan or Team Jeffries?

Eventually, Jim Jordan will be Jim Jordan.

He might get himself elected speaker by promising moderate Republicans that he’ll look out for their interests. He may even keep his word, at least on a few votes. Perhaps we’ll avoid a shutdown after all. Maybe heavy support in the House for funding Ukraine will twist his arm.

But eventually, Jordan will be Jordan. He’ll have to be, as making him speaker and having the House function precisely as it did under Kevin McCarthy would defeat the purpose. When you resolve to put the lunatics in charge of the asylum, it’s because you think the asylum should be run … differently. Dramatically so.

He’ll need to appease the base that reveres him as a MAGA icon and is clamoring to see him become speaker. Presumably that means impeaching Biden. Conceivably, it’ll mean much more.

For a Republican in a pro-Biden district, there’s no happy ending to that story. Going along with Speaker Jordan’s agenda will mean placing yourself emphatically on the wrong side of the majority back home. Refusing to go along will mean inviting the same intimidating pressure tactics that Jordan is using at this very moment to consolidate support among House Republicans for his speakership bid.

Under his leadership, every vote will be a potential litmus test for Republicans in which opposing him means risking a primary challenge. Normally, conference leaders try to protect their most vulnerable members by sparing them from having to take difficult votes, but high expectations for Jordan among the MAGA base will make it harder for him to do that. A centrist House Republican who’s reluctantly supporting him this week will find that their reward is being forced to take similarly difficult votes, with potentially dire electoral consequences, ad nauseam for the rest of his speakership.

Needless to say, they’ll get no grace from populist primary voters for having supported Jordan for speaker to begin with. The only litmus test that counts is the next one.

In all probability, moderate Republicans will face voters next fall having deeply alienated Democrats in their district by allying themselves with Jordan and having alienated numerous MAGA Republicans by crossing Jordan on one or more key votes. With Trump at the top of the ballot, they’ll spend much of their time attempting to assure swing voters, “I’m not that type of Republican.” Except that, as Democrats will eagerly remind everyone, supporting Jordan for speaker means you are that kind of Republican.

Wouldn’t some of those moderates be better off deciding that a party capable of trusting Jim Jordan with power isn’t a party they want to be a part of? Not just better off morally, I mean, but politically and electorally. If members of the MAGA bloc no longer feel bound to be “team players” for the Republican Party, why should those in the moderate bloc feel any greater obligation?

There aren’t many true moderates in the Republican conference, but there are enough to make a majority for either party. They align broadly with Democrats on some of the most urgent issues facing the House—Ukraine funding, averting shutdowns, opposing impeachment absent more compelling evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption. There are real differences between Hakeem Jeffries’ caucus and centrist Republicans on cultural matters like abortion, but those differences could presumably be papered over to some degree. A bloc of Republican defectors, for example, could vow to oppose federal abortion restrictions despite being personally pro-life.

They could approach Jeffries and the House Democratic leadership with a deal: In exchange for the party’s support in next year’s Democratic primaries, they’ll switch now and make Jeffries speaker.

It would be risky. They would instantly be mortal enemies of the Republican base. Right-wing voters would turn out in force in next year’s House elections to defeat them. But they’d also be heroes to the Democratic base, especially if they dressed up their opposition to Jordan in terms of not wanting to empower insurrectionists. I’m not convinced that their chances of reelection would be worse as Democrats who are loved by the left and hated by the right than as Republicans who are disliked by both sides for being too pro-Jordan or too anti-Jordan as the case may be.

Especially since, unlike Republicans, House Democrats still care about their swing-district members. “We ran our caucus to basically support members in swing districts. That’s how we got power,” former House Republican Tom Davis recently told the Washington Post. “Today, they run the caucus now to protect members from R+30 districts to protect them in primaries.”

Republican switchers would shed any Trump baggage they might otherwise have been saddled with next year the moment they switch. And they’d have the moral satisfaction of knowing that Matt Gaetz’s grand scheme to oust McCarthy and replace him with a populist gargoyle more to Steve Bannon’s liking did not, in fact, pan out in the end. Incentives work the same way in this case as they work everywhere else. If Gaetz’s effort to nuke McCarthy ends up being rewarded with a speaker from the Freedom Caucus, there’ll be more nuclear escalation in the future.

Why would moderate Republicans want to reward him that way when it would take only five flippers to teach the Trump bloc a harsh lesson about the limits of minority rule and populist intimidation?

Well, because they’re team players. Or cowards, as you prefer.

This tweet made the rounds on Monday afternoon to grim laughter on all sides.

Moderates always cave.

The most outspoken centrist Republican in the speakership saga has been freshman Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, forever ready with a colorful quote for reporters about his disgust at McCarthy’s ouster. He won his seat in 2022 by less than a percentage point; Biden won the district by nearly 10 points two years earlier. He’s precisely the sort of member who might benefit from switching parties and ridding himself of MAGA nonsense once and for all.

Over the weekend, Lawler was recorded telling a constituent that he’ll likely support Jim Jordan. “If he has the votes, I’ll probably just vote for him because I’m not gonna be a cog in the wheel—to do what?” he said. “We have to get back to work.”

“To do what?” What would be achieved by stopping coup-enabler Jim Jordan from becoming the most powerful man in the House, third in line to the presidency behind two Democrats whose inauguration he attempted to prevent?

On Sunday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw was asked which way he’s leaning on the speakership. Crenshaw isn’t a “moderate,” but he’s staunchly hawkish and has run afoul of the America First-ers many times. One might expect him to feel queasy at having a Trump slobberer like Jordan in charge.

He isn’t. He’s voting for Jordan too. And when he was reminded during an interview on Sunday why that’s irresponsible, his response was revealing.

If you insist on holding a grudge with respect to trying to overthrow the government, you can’t be a Republican in good standing. Dan Crenshaw and Mike Lawler would rather be team players than hold that particular grudge.

That’s all there is to it. They can’t imagine switching teams by joining the other party, but they also won’t lift a finger against populist Republicans for refusing to show allegiance to their own partisan team. They’d rather retain their seats and remain willing captives in a hostage crisis than do anything to end that crisis that might—but might not, in the case of purple-district Republicans—damage their chances at reelection.

I’ll enjoy the misery Speaker Jordan will visit upon them. They’ve earned it.