Column: Could Jim Jordan do anything other than tear government apart?

Rep. Jim Jordan has undergone quite the rush makeover in his back-from-the-dead attempt to become House speaker, second in line to the presidency. It wasn’t enough, however, for him to get elected on a first ballot Tuesday. He’ll need to do more.

The Trump henchman once condemned as a career-long “legislative terrorist” by another Ohio Republican, former Speaker John A. Boehner, has been passing himself off as a virtual Solon to win the support of dozens of Republicans who only last week voted against him.

Opinion Columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

The supposed statesman in waiting still eschews a suit coat in the Capitol Hill hallways as he rushes from closed-door courtships to strategy meetings. That’s hardly a sign of disrespect for the institution compared to Jordan’s real sin: complicity with Donald Trump in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that ravaged the Capitol and democracy itself. But there have been changes: Jordan no longer speaks in a mile-a-minute, hand-slashing rant. His voice is measured and his body still, befitting the new persona.

More important than his style is Jordan’s apparent substantive change: He has reportedly assured Republicans that he’s sworn off government shutdowns, and that as speaker he’d allow House votes on the must-pass annual spending bills and aid for Ukraine as well as Israel. In a letter to House Republicans on Monday, he vowed to take the lead on passing “responsible legislation to fund our government and support our military.” (“Responsible” is doing a lot of work there.)

In other words, the nine-term “lawmaker” who has never gotten a law passed and only focused on “tearing things apart” — another Boehner critique — promises to actually govern. Jordan, who in 2015 and 2018 pushed out first Boehner and then another Republican speaker, Paul D. Ryan, because they compromised too much, now clamors for the party to unify behind him.

Few are fooled by Jordan Redux. Alas, however, a good number of the roughly 50-plus moderates and self-proclaimed pragmatists in the MAGA-fied House Republican majority have claimed they’re sold. At dawn Monday, Punchbowl News reported that “Never Jordan” Republicans were committed to vote against him “for as long as it takes to ensure he’s never speaker.” But two of those named — Reps. Mike Rogers of Alabama and Ken Calvert of Corona — hours later endorsed Jordan. Others soon followed.

Yet by Tuesday morning, just hours before the House vote on a speaker, Jordan was short of the needed votes. He could only lose four Republicans. He lost 20 — one more than former Speaker Kevin McCarthy lost in January on the first of 15 ballots before he was finally elected.

Like McCarthy, Jordan might ultimately win. The surprise is that this less popular bomb thrower converted as many foes as he did.

You have to believe that they know better than to buy Jordan’s revamp. But moderates always fold eventually — “Tale as old as time,” as one Republican Disney fan allowed. (Bringing to mind another Beast that sought a transmogrification. But he had Beauty.)

Caving is inherent in political moderates’ makeup: Everything in moderation. They won’t provoke shutdowns and defaults. They recoil at the dysfunction now defining House Republicans, especially at a time of globe-shaking wars in Europe and the Middle East.

Pragmatists generally want the government to work — even if it means they concede. That’s a good thing. Yet in this case, their surrender is downright cringey — and arguably contrary to the good governance they claim to want.

Take Rogers, the Alabaman who chairs the Armed Services Committee. A home state news website reported at 7 a.m. Monday that Rogers opposed Jordan as speaker and said “he’s not budging.” At 9:30 a.m. Rogers announced he would back Jordan, after conversations that were “cordial, thoughtful, and productive” — not words ever before associated with Jordan — about passing appropriations, farm and defense bills. “I have always been a team player,” Rogers added.

Calvert, the California convert to Jordan, likewise said he switched based on his conversations with Jordan about “our national security and appropriations goals.”

Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri recently called Jordan “disgraceful” and said “Hell, no!” she wouldn’t back him. She is close to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Republicans’ initial nominee for speaker who dropped out of the running when die-hard Jordanites wouldn’t fall in line behind him. On Monday Wagner also endorsed Jordan, echoing Rogers: “I have always been a team player.”

Jordan has been anything but a team player. And if he now becomes team leader, it will still be for Team Trump. Steering appropriations bills into law would be quite a feat for a congressman who routinely opposes them, including the stopgap measure that prevented a government shutdown Oct. 1. Success will require compromise with Democrats, something Jordan has never done.

To get this far, he and his camp have cynically played on the pragmatists’ desire to end the deadlock that is paralyzing the House for a third week. Jordan called for the House vote Tuesday to smoke out the holdouts; the votes in Republicans’ caucus have been secret ballots. Now, those who publicly voted against him will feel the wrath of the party’s MAGA base, and Sean Hannity.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the Republican converts for Jordan aren’t being played. Maybe his makeover will prove real. Maybe, given Jordan’s popularity with the MAGA forces in Congress and out, he is the one person who can sell the right on the inevitable compromises necessary to govern.

I doubt it. But if Jordan is elected speaker, we have to hope for silver linings. Democracy depends on it.

@jackiekcalmes