A Speaker Jim Jordan is not ‘sending our best’ | Will Bunch Newsletter

When I was 11, I naively hoped the song lyric, “War! What is it good for?” would be a transistor-radio memory and not a question I’d be asking myself again and again for the rest of my life. The butcherous attacks by Hamas on civilians in southern Israel are immoral and unconscionable — as are Israel’s policies that turned the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison for 2 million people. There were plenty of chances for the world to fight for peace in this troubled land, instead of waiting until the bombs are bursting in air, when it is always too late. On that same plastic radio, I heard John Lennon sing, “War is over ... if you want it.” He would have turned 83 on Monday.

📮 It’s unanimous! Newsletter readers agree (along with me) that it’s long overdue for workers at Waffle House, and their comrades in the food-service industry, to earn a living wage of $25 an hour, at the least! “On their feet for hours at a time, often hot and uncomfortable and you know they’re dealing with cranky customers,” was the typical rationale, cited here by Nora Kreisler from Westbook, Maine. Most noted it’s impossible to have a car and a roof while living on less than $1,000 a week.

This week’s question: Most U.S. politicians have rightly condemned the barbarous attacks on civilians by Hamas, but with little mention of Israel’s long-running, brutal occupation regime. Is that fair under these circumstances? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer.

If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.

It’s pretty hard work to become the worst speaker of the House in American history. After all, we’ve got a guy who was second in line to the presidency from 1999 to 2007 ― the longest serving Republican House speaker in U.S. history — who ended up in federal prison for crimes related to his sexual abuse of boys as their high-school wrestling coach.

But Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a featherweight both in collegiate wrestling as well as later in life, has a real shot at the title.

Of course, the 59-year-old current chair of the House Judiciary Committee first has to become speaker, the job that became vacant (although some would say it remained vacant) last week after Jordan’s fellow lightweight Kevin McCarthy was ousted in a mini-coup by far-right members of his own GOP caucus. News reports late Monday said that both Jordan and the GOP’s House whip, Rep. Steve Scalise, were fighting to gather the 217 or 218 votes eventually needed.

I’ll say this for Scalise, a Louisianan with 15 years on Capitol Hill — he’s a fighter, having survived a bullet from a crazed MSNBC watcher and now battling blood cancer. It’s just that he fights for the worst things, having famously described himself to an associate as “David Duke without the baggage.” What could possibly be worse?

Well...

I’m focusing here on Jordan because I think one thing makes him the clear frontrunner: He has been endorsed by Donald Trump! And he’s also more likely to appeal to the far-right, burn-it-all down clique that got McCarthy booted in the first place. That’s because the Steve Bannon crowd that wants government replaced by utter chaos sees a kindred spirit in Jordan.

Much more so than McCarthy, a creature from the George W. Bush era — Jordan would be the first GOP speaker who came up totally through the hothouse of Fox News. He has risen not through any legislative achievements (he has none) or dealmaking skills, but rather from his ability to generate soundbites through mudslinging and conspiracy theories. If Democrats were mad at McCarthy for indulging the fact-free impeachment drive against President Joe Biden, how will they ever deal with Jordan, who has been leading the charge?

I have to agree with this dude from Jordan’s own stomping grounds who wrote a letter to their hometown Columbus Dispatch, bashing the congressman’s extremist positions and lack of civility to conclude: “There is no worse human being to have a leadership position than Jim Jordan.”

But it’s not just that Jordan is epically unqualified. Or his wrongheaded positions on issues like the war in Ukraine, with Jordan’s support for cutting off U.S. aid that would be a massive blow to global democracy. He also holds the House that he’s running to lead in contempt, and I mean that in the literal, legal sense of the word.

Last December, as it wrapped up its business ahead of the GOP takeover, the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 referred Jordan (and three other members, including Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry) to the House Ethics Committee for defying its subpoenas. There are many questions swirling around the wannabe speaker, regarding both the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on Capitol Hill and his actions that day — when he reportedly spoke twice by phone with the 45th president.

As my old college friend David Corn and colleague Dan Friedman noted Monday for Mother Jones, Jordan wasn’t only one of the 147 Republicans who voted on the floor of Congress to deny electoral votes to Biden. He was, in fact, highly engaged in a lot of the more out-there aspects of the Big Lie around 2020 election fraud, even addressing a “Stop the Steal” rally in Harrisburg. “Representative Jordan was a significant player in President Trump’s efforts,” the Jan. 6 Committee said in its final report, citing his meetings with White House officials and Trump’s now-indicted lawyer Rudy Giuliani about issues like persuading Vice President Mike Pence to aid the plot.

No wonder Jordan would rather risk sanction than answer questions. And no wonder Trump, who praised the Ohioan as “a fighter” in a key phone call during the coup plot, has now thrown his considerable weight behind Jordan’s speakership bid.

There’s another scandal that Jordan doesn’t like to talk about: his years as assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, where at least six former wrestlers have alleged that Jordan turned a blind eye to years of sexual abuse of student athletes by the team doctor. Is this relevant? Do you remember the Maya Angelou saying that when people show you they really are, believe them the first time?

If voters are already telling pollsters that “Washington is broken,” how will they react to the chaos from the Fox News fever dream of Biden-family probes on steroids while legitimate charges against Trump — and Jordan himself — are tossed down the memory hole? The fascist schemers like Bannon, who see a complete meltdown in Congress as a pathway to the dictatorial reign of a “Red Caesar,” must be bursting with excitement. The risk for Democrats in supporting the ouster of McCarthy was always that the next guy would be many times worse. Here comes Mr. Jordan.

Question: Not a Phillies fan, but how the hell did Bryce Harper get doubled off 1st base? If he stopped before second base, he still would have made it home if the ball went over Harris’s head, OR made it back to first if the ball was caught. — Via Dr. Gonzo (@tinhornpolitics) on X/Twitter

Answer: I’ve been a baseball fanatic for 56 years, and I’ve never seen a game-ending play in a big game like the finale of the Phillies’ way-beyond-heartbreaking meltdown loss in Game 2 of their playoff series with the Atlanta Braves. To summarize for any cave dwellers, the Phils lost 5-4 when Nick Castellanos’ 9th-inning long drive ended with a remarkable leaping catch by the Braves’ Michael Harris II, and Bryce Harper, who’d already rounded second base hoping to score the game-tying run, was doubled up. Decades after I’m dead and gone, fans will be still calling WIP to argue whether Harper should have stopped at (or before) second. I think for the Phillies to win over time, you have to let Harper be Harper, and that includes taking wild risks. The silver lining is that such a gutting loss gives the Phils a chance to show the world what this team — and this city ― is made of. I’m still betting on them.

If you’ve been reading this space or my other Inquirer columns in 2023, you know there’s been one overarching theme: American democracy is in big trouble. A so-called “Red Caesar” 47th presidency for Donald Trump would be a dictatorial disaster. And voting for President Joe Biden, flawed fighter for our political traditions, is the only realistic way to stop him. The last thing I want to see is Biden making this argument harder, so it’s infuriating to watch him carry out arguably his dumbest move since taking office 33 months ago.

In 2020, then-candidate Biden made a simple promise about the U.S. southern border: “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.” His rejoinder to Trump’s expensive xenophobia surely won him votes, but what part of “another foot of wall” did Biden not understand? Last week, his administration stunned supporters by announcing not only the construction of 20 miles of new border wall in Texas, but the suspension of 26 environmental rules to make it happen. Team Biden insisted this was a spending mandate from Congress, yet Team Biden didn’t really seem to go to the mat to stop this; in fact, his homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote in the federal register there is “an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers” in Starr County, Texas.

I’m not an expert on congressional mandates, but I’ve seen a lifetime of White House politics, and this is one of the most boneheaded screwups of all-time. It’s true that Biden is under water with voters on immigration policy, but appearing to flip-flop on the wall won’t gain him one additional vote. What it will do is alienate core Democrats who remember his 2020 promise — especially the young voters he needs to show up in order to beat Trump. By this time in 2025, we could have 20 miles of new wall, and barbaric treatment of refugees under an authoritarian Trump 47. Democracy needs you to do so much better than this, President Biden.

Not everything that happened during Donald Trump’s presidency was bad. His shock 2016 election inspired a lot of folks who’d been fairly apolitical to get involved and sometimes run for office, even for neglected local positions. On Oct. 10, 2017, I wrote about my door-knocking outing with Anna Payne, a then-30-year-old woman running for Middletown Township auditor in a GOP-led swath of Bucks County. “The people who are upset or part of the Resistance, looking to do anything they can, they can put new people in their township,” Payne told me. Six years later, Democrat Payne chairs the township board of supervisors. Read how she got started: “How to save America by running for Middletown Township auditor.”