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America dodges bullet (for now): Jim Jordan out as GOP’s House Speaker designate losing vote by large margin

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America has — for now — dodged a bullet.

Rep. Jim Jordan, who played a role in trying to overthrow the government to install Donald Trump after Joe Biden was elected — the quintessential ideologue and partisan to whom “compromise” is a dirty word — has been axed by the Republican Party as its Speaker of the House designate. And he lost bigly.

House Republicans, meeting behind closed doors, voted Friday by secret ballot for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to step aside as the GOP speaker nominee after a third vote on the House floor in which Jordan fell well short of a majority of the full chamber. The vote to remove Jordan was 112 to 86. The move leaves the Republican conference without a nominee more than two weeks after the ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as speaker. House Republicans will return Monday to start the process again. Members have until Sunday to declare speaker candidacies.

The New York Times:

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio lost an internal vote to continue as his party’s nominee for speaker on Friday, plunging the House into further uncertainty and sending Republicans searching for a new leader.

The vote came hours after Mr. Jordan failed for a third time to win election as House speaker, leaving his party with no consensus on a way forward and the chamber paralyzed in the face of growing pressure to get back to business.

Mr. Jordan had pushed ahead with the vote despite clear signs that he would fall short, and the outcome showed that he had actually lost ground, with 25 Republicans opposing him compared to the 22 who voted against him on his last try on Wednesday. Needing 215 votes to win, he received 194.

Three Republicans from swing districts won by President Biden — Representatives Marc Molinaro of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Thomas H. Kean Jr. of New Jersey — abandoned Mr. Jordan after supporting him earlier.

“Unfortunately Jim is no longer going to be the nominee,” said former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose ouster 18 days ago by hard-right rebels threw the House into disarray. “We will have to go back to the drawing board.”

There is no consensus among Republicans about an alternative candidate to Mr. Jordan. Republicans have already shown resistance to a temporary solution that would give Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, who is acting as speaker pro tempore, the authority to run the House for a few months. The ideological and personal divisions that have flared in recent days show no signs of abating.

Jordan is a hero among MAGA Republicans and anathema to Democrats and little d democrats. His role of essentially being a mouthpiece for Donald Trump made him poison to many Republicans not in hard-core MAGA districts and the word most often to refer to his performance in Congress and in the attempt to overthrow the government has been “insurrectionist.” To Democrats, he is a hyper partisan, knee-jerk conspiracy theory advocate most notable for shouting during Congressional hearings and mouthpiece for Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity. He is predictable and has not produced any legislation since being in Congress.

With his defeat democracy seems a bit safer. For now. So the question is: when the Republicans meet on Monday will it be an upgrade, or a downgrade?

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