The weapons are out and swinging in the back of the bus as House Republicans come to terms with their upcoming minority status.
Countless polls are predicting the GOP tumbling down to minority status, but the party still must hammer out who will lead them in their diminished status — and Sources Say News reports members are already squaring off with potential leader Jim Jordan, (R-Ohio) “widely expected to run” if Republicans lose their majority. Jordan has coveted the spot before, but his ambition would likely pit him against current embattled Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.).
The fight for Minority leader can be just as bloody because a victory only takes a simple majority on a secret ballot, which Sources Say reporter Juliegrace Brufke explains is a much lower bar than the 218 votes Jordan failed to nab three times in 2023.
But Jordan’s enemies are looking to use his alleged relationship with former House speaker Kevin McCarthy to sink his boat.
“Kevin is rooting for us to fail every day. And it shows. I mean, people hate that. They’re not just ambivalent,” one lawmaker told Source Say News. “Is Newt Gingrich out there as a former speaker, saying anything other than, this is how the Republicans can win?”
Republicans remain furious that McCarthy, out of Congress for nearly three years, went on Bloomberg TV days before Election Day and slammed the GOP’s many mistakes in the months leading up to November.
“It’s not that the Democrats are going to win this election. Republicans are going to lose it,” McCarthy told Bloomberg.
“If I was Jim Jordan and I wanted to lead the Republican conference, I wouldn’t pick up the Kevin McCarthy playbook,” former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who led the effort to oust McCarthy in 2023, told Source Say News.
Republican critics speaking anonymously also say McCarthy is driven to coach Jordan because of his hot rivalry with Scalise, but they claim the former leader is also scraping for relevancy and an easier path to lobby people at the top.
“I feel like it’s interesting the USS McCarthy is looking to float again. It’s like so typical,” another GOP lawmaker told Source Say News.
Some GOP members told Brufke that Jordan is no longer the “Tea Party bomb-thrower of 2010.”
“For people like me, who have not seen the Jim Jordan of 2010, the Tea Party Jim Jordan ... it’s a very, very different Jordan,” one lawmaker told Source Say News.
However, there are plenty others who are leery of more MAGA trouble and where it’s gotten them today, reports Brufke.
“There are enough members, I think, still left who kind of remember the Jim Jordan of old, and so they’re probably going to be more in the Scalise camp. But Jim’s been very active all around the country and I think he’s probably calling a lot of members,” another lawmaker told Source Say News.