How right-wing media 'elevated fringe rabble-rouser' Jim Jordan’s failed speaker bid: analysis

23 October 2023

When Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was running for House speaker, right-wing media figures like Fox News' Sean Hannity and "War Room" host Steve Bannon made a concerted effort to bully and coerce Republicans into voting for him. But it didn't work.

The first time Jordan's nomination for speaker came up for a full House vote, 20 Republicans voted against him. That number increased to 22 on the second vote and 25 on the third. After that, House Republicans gave up on Jordan and searched for a new nominee.

In an article published on October 23, Columbia Journalism Review's Jon Allsop examines the negative role that right-wing media played in Jordan's ill-fated run for speaker.

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"As I wrote in the aftermath of that vote," Allsop explains, "(Rep. Kevin) McCarthy's ouster looked like proof, among other things, of the growing power of right-wing media over Republican politics, both in an immediate sense — media agitators, including Steve Bannon, had pushed the anti-McCarthy crusade — and over the long term, in the genre's elevation of star power over teamwork…. the fringe over the mainstream…. division over compromise, anger over action."

Allsop notes that "at a glance," Jordan's "failure to succeed McCarthy appeared to illustrate the limits of" right-wing media's "power." He adds, however, that

"even at his lowest ebb, nearly 200 of Jordan's Republican colleagues backed him for speaker — a remarkable tally for a man long perceived as a fringe rabble-rouser, and, if anything, a testament to the power of right-wing media in dragging the GOP toward him, rather than the inverse."

"Supporters of Jordan, not least in right-wing media, clearly believed that a pressure campaign appealing to the party's grass roots — who, of course, consume right-wing media — would cow the holdouts," Allsop writes. "Initially, this strategy appeared to be working, but it ultimately backfired: Several of the holdouts chafed at it, and stood firm. In the end, only two dozen or so House Republicans opposed Jordan. Given the GOP's slender majority, this was all it took to sink him."

Read the Columbia Journalism Review's full report at this link.

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