Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio was seeking the speakership in the House, but after falling short in the first two rounds of voting, he announced on Thursday that he would not be seeking a third vote.
Instead, multiple sources close to Jordan told CBS News that Jordan said he would back a new plan that would give the temporary speaker, Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, additional powers.
Jordan now becomes the second Republican member of the House to seek the gavel and fall short, after Majority Leader Steve Scalise was the first one to seek the top position in the lower chamber following the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
In his first vote for the speakership, Jordan fell 17 votes short, gaining only 200 initial votes. Many people have surmised that one of the main reasons so many Republicans decided not to back Jordan was because they were taking out revenge against hard-line Republicans like Jordan and Matt Gaetz of Florida – who led the charge to remove McCarthy as speaker just a few weeks ago.
Appearing on “The Chris Salcedo Show” on Newsmax on Tuesday, Republican Representative Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania commented on the situation:
“They think by voting for Jim Jordan at this point that they are caving in to where Matt Gaetz was when he forced McCarthy out. They feel so bad about it that they want to get some revenge, and they don’t want to vote for whom Gaetz is supportive of, and that’s Jim Jordan.
“But, we’ve got to get over it. We’ve got to get over it for the American people, and we’ve got to get over to move on and deal with some serious issues.”
With Jordan no longer seeking the speakership, the future of who will lead the House is very much in question – even more so than when it was apparent that no GOP member would have enough votes to win the gavel.
With no speaker in place, the House is at a complete standstill. This is a major problem, as big issues such as a long-term funding bill for the U.S. government and providing to support to Israel in its war against Hamas can’t move forward at all.
It’s not certain yet when the motion to extend additional powers to McHenry might make it to the House floor. It’s also uncertain whether such a proposal would even pass.
That’s because there are already hard-line Republicans who are speaking out against it. For instance, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado said the plan was a “complete betrayal.”
She posted on the social media platform X:
“I will not sit back and watch a complete betrayal of the GOP base with this ‘plan’ that’s being discussed. I ran because I was sick and tired of politicians coming up here and cutting deals and releasing ‘holier than thou’ statements about why we just had to accept it.”
