Your GOP (Secretly) at Work

I'm having a hard time not fully agreeing with this:

Elected representatives had a secret vote over Jim Jordan's candidacy for Speaker of the House. These are public officials avoiding public scrutiny. It's the same reasoning that brings us omnibus budget bills, and continuing resolutions anytime we don't have a budget, which has been nearly all the time since, what? The first lengthy expanse was six of the eight years Obama was in office...when Republicans held the House of Representatives.

Why do you think the 25 who publicly voted against Jim Jordan didn't mind doing so? Because most were on either the Appropriations Committee or Armed Services. They didn't mind reminding Washington who the sugar mommies and daddies were. Washington reminding Washington who to thank when the budget hands out the money. (That's just a bit of my frustration coming out.)

Republican primary voters chip away at this mentality every cycle, but we haven't done enough yet. Nice of these folks to energize our motivation.

Look, I publicly didn't agree with social media pressuring from this same account (above) to reps who didn't vote for Jim Jordan. If there is a case to be made, it should be made mainly by constituents. That is who these representatives serve, and they can choose to serve by their own view of their district's interests, or by their voters' view. These are not always at odds, and I think it unlikely some of the X users who lambasted these reps researched and polled every district.

I understand the anger they have over this, too, but it's just fuel for disregard of what people want to accomplish. And, no, I don't believe leaving them alone will change anything.

The Elder Members of the Church

The church I grew up in recently held a vote over whether to remain United Methodist or join the Global Methodist church. The dispute was over doctrine, of course, and you may have heard something about this. The older members of the church expressed their fervent wish for "everything to be how it's always been." They wanted no change and failed to grasp that voting for change was actually the way to preserve the substance of the church they had, if not the visual and physical brick-and-mortar.

It seems like we're in a similar situation with the GOP. The organizational structure of the party continues in power despite disagreements with its general membership. The difference, though, is there is only one party structure, whereas, for example, my hometown had over 70 different denominations of Christian churches when I was a teenager.

That's an oversimplification of the religion problem, I know, but the point is that as conservatives or center-right conservatives, or whatever label you wish to wear, we only have one place to go and it's broken. We either fix it the way we want or start something new. Most of us, it seems, think our adherence is to what the Republican Party should be. In other words, we're not the problem, so I don't anticipate the solution will be to start anew.

No Stated Reasons for Opposition

Did it have to be Jim Jordan? No, I suppose not. The vocalized opposition to him was so weak, though, making references to "pressure" and not offering a single argument against Jordan's candidacy. Pressure? You haven't faced anything like that in running for office or being a sitting member of the US House of Representatives? But, then, I assumed they meant pressure from other members.

“When the pressure campaigns and attacks on fellow members ramped up, it became clear to me the House Republican conference did not need a bully as the speaker,” said Republican Drew Ferguson of Georgia. (Source: Bloomberg)

Representative Ferguson's reference was to online pressure. The online statements are plainly ridiculous, as already stated, and not a campaign. Does Ferguson really believe that was orchestrated by Jim Jordan? Jordan has a lot of popular support, and it's possible to see how someone might believe it, if they didn't give it much thought. It was enough, though, to prompt a response from Jordan, “No American should accost another for their beliefs. We condemn all threats against our colleagues and it is imperative that we come together.” (Ibid)

So, I get it, but I'm still not buying it. Why? Because the opposition was there already. The social media was reactive. There was no one to target prior to the first vote. So, you're against Jordan because of the online pressure? Try again.

Like him/hate him, Matt Gaetz had reasons behind his opposition to McCarthy. He stated them, then compromised. I suspect he had plenty of people pressuring him as well. These 20-25 did nothing like that. That suggests their reasons aren't reconcilable with public opinion, or for some other reason the reps don't want to say what they're thinking aloud. Fair enough, but don't complain what motives we assign to your opposition in our own analysis.

Next Up

Can't say I'm impressed or not impressed with this next round of candidates, I simply don't know who they are other than Byron Donalds. Rep. Donalds makes a splash here and there and strikes me as thoughtful. He seems to know his stuff when it comes to energy and financial services. He also had something to say about the pressure campaign:

“Listen, in any organization, you or any team or any locker room, you have to deal with everybody differently. You can’t have the same style with everybody because everybody responds to different things. And you have to understand that and know that,” Donalds said when asked about outside pressure from “email mobs” and “Twitter mobs.” (Source: The Hill)

Sensible. I suspect he has no shot at getting the approval of the Scalise crowd. Why? Reasons to be named later, I guess.

I also suspect many more GOP reps will face primaries in 2024. It seems a popular idea on X, anyway, so someone is orchestrating that, right? After, uh, Catturd's anger subsided, that was the action he advocated as well. Had the opposition to Jordan made their case, we might have reason to disagree with this action. They made a choice, now voters may make another.