Jim Jordan Speech for Kevin McCarthy Backfires
Jim Jordan #JimJordan
Representative Jim Jordan went to bat for his colleague Kevin McCarthy in response to Republican chaos over who should be the next speaker of the House, but Jordan’s speech did little to sway the 19 House Republicans who remained firm against McCarthy.
On the first day of the new Congress, the House GOP conference broke into disarray as members were unable to unite behind one leader—a troubling sign for Republicans, who are already facing a slim majority in the chamber.
On Tuesday, McCarthy suffered a rare defeat, not just once but three times as he failed to gain the necessary 218 votes required to be elected the speaker of the House. His failure in whipping his caucus into line marked the first time in a century that a speaker was not elected on a first ballot.
Ahead of a second ballot, Jordan—who voted in favor of McCarthy in the first vote—stood to nominate McCarthy, telling his colleagues McCarthy is “the right guy to lead us.”
Jordan told House Republicans in a floor speech that the differences between members of the GOP conference “pale in comparison” to the differences between Republicans and Democrats, and urged them to “rally behind” McCarthy.
In the plea to his GOP colleagues, Jordan said while he and McCarthy “haven’t always agreed on everything,” he has always admired McCarthy’s “fight.”
“We owe it to them—the American people, the good people of this great country—to step forward to come together to get a speaker elected,” Jordan said from the floor on Tuesday.
Of the 19 Republicans who voted against McCarthy in the first ballot, six voted for Jordan, who did not make a formal bid for the speakership.
But Jordan’s efforts to whip votes for McCarthy not only failed to prevent his colleagues from rebuking McCarthy for a second time but also seemed to backfire on the congressman as he accidentally rallied those dissenters to vote for him instead.
In the second ballot, the same 19 House Republicans still voted against McCarthy. But this time around, they all voted for Jordan instead.
Then in a third ballot, Jordan earned yet another vote after Representative Byron Donalds flipped his vote from McCarthy to Jordan in a jaw-dropping move that caused a stir on both sides of the aisle.
In a speech nominating Jordan—just after Jordan gave his own impassioned speech for McCarthy, Representative Matt Gaetz praised Jordan for giving “a speech with more vision than we have ever heard from the alternative.”
“Jim Jordan is humble—perhaps today, humble to a fault,” Gaetz said. “Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House isn’t someone who wants it so bad. Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House isn’t someone who has sold shares of themselves for more than a decade to get it.”
“Every one of my Republican colleagues knows that the person who can lead…who has the skill and the talent and the will is Jim Jordan,” Gaetz added. “I’m nominating him and I’m voting for him.”
Update 01/03/23, 4:50 p.m. ET: This story was updated to reflect the third ballot.
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