A senior GOP staffer: "They’re not legislators, they’re just assholes. These guys have such a minority mindset that the prospect of getting something done just scares them away, or pisses them off."Friday morning the Washington Post referred to Jim Jordan as "a prominent and polarizing conservative leader" and noted that he "is strongly considering a run for House speaker in a bid that could upend the race to succeed Paul D. Ryan." The Ohio Republican has been plotting Ryan's downfall for months, even reaching out for help from Democrats! He's been pretending to be whipping votes for Mark Meadows while secretly harboring his own (somewhat absurd) ambitions on the speakership.A little background: Like Denny Hastert, Jordan was a wrestling coach. A career politician, he was in the state legislature from 1994 'til 2006 when he wormed his way into Congress, representing a deep red, poorly educated, nearly 90% white district (PVI is R+14) with no cities. McCain won the district with 54.4%. Romney took it with 56% but Trump crushed Hillary 64.3% to 30.7%. Jordan was one of the founders of the extremist House Freedom Caucus and in 2017 John Boehner summed up his career in politics very simply: "Jordan was a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio House and Senate… A terrorist. A legislative terrorist."CNN reported he's being "encouraged to consider a run for House speaker." Its his own ego that's doing the encouragement-- and his insane ideology. He's made it clear that he hates Ryan as much as he hated Boehner. "A House member, asking for anonymity, told CNN that Jordan informed him that he was considering running for the top job." He's been surreptitiously encouraging Democrats to move in for the kill and force Ryan to retire early.
The House Freedom Caucus is viewed among rank-and-file members as a trouble-causing faction within the House GOP. The chances of Jordan running and successfully winning would be slim, but if he were to enter the race it could make the job tougher for someone else to unite the conference and win the votes.So far, the often-cited candidates for the job continue to be the No. 2 House Republican, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and the No. 3 House Republican, Majority Whip Steve Scalise, but the effort to encourage Jordan reveals that a bitter leadership race may yet still unfold within the fractured GOP conference. Scalise has said he does not plan to run directly against McCarthy, but a leadership source told CNN earlier in the week that Scalise plans to be ready in case McCarthy declines to run for the job or struggles to find the votes as he did in 2015.