If Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is elected speaker of the House, conservative activists will not only have scored the ultimate victory over the vaunted Republican establishment.
They will also no longer be able to blame the establishment for how the party governs.
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This is, of course, a big “if” given the recent histories of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who were shoo-ins for the speaker’s gavel until the moment they weren’t. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) still clings to his position as one of the last vestiges of GOP establishment power.
But the election of the first Freedom Caucus speaker will be a test for the conservative rebels. Can they stop rebelling and govern with one of their own in the speaker’s chair?
Jordan has been a perpetual thorn in the side of Republican leadership. He was a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus in 2015. By the end of the year, this faction of conservative lawmakers was instrumental in toppling House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who blasted Jordan as a “legislative terrorist.”
"They can't tell you what they're for. They can tell you everything they're against,” Boehner later groused to Vanity Fair about the Freedom Caucus. “They're anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That's where their mindset is.”
That certainly seems to be how things are playing out with the narrow Republican House majority that was elected last year. McCarthy took 15 ballots to be elected speaker. Nine months later, he was tossed out despite having the support of more than 90% of the House Republican conference — including Jordan.
Since McCarthy’s removal, the House has been without a speaker for nearly two weeks as war rages in Israel, President Joe Biden is seeking new aid for Ukraine, and a government shutdown looms.
Averting an earlier shutdown was McCarthy’s final, and fatal, act as speaker.
For Jordan-style conservatives, this is not an exercise in legislative nihilism but in promise-keeping. Republicans campaign on repealing and replacing Obamacare, but cannot muster the votes for repeal when they control Congress or coalesce around a replacement.
Republicans run on cutting federal spending and then don’t. They promise to return the appropriations process to regular order and continue to push omnibus spending and continuing resolutions. They promise to pass legislation without Democratic votes and a majority of their own caucus, then fail to do so. The list goes on, to include controlling immigration and securing the border.
Conservative objectives take 50 years to achieve, like the reversal of Roe v. Wade, or they don’t get accomplished at all.
Republican primary voters have also increasingly taken to rewarding combative candidates. This intensified with the Tea Party under former President Barack Obama, continued to the formation of the Freedom Caucus as a smaller, purer answer to the Republican Study Committee, and culminated with former President Donald Trump beating 16 more conventional Republicans for the party’s presidential nomination.
The desire for less genteel presidential contenders than Mitt Romney or John McCain has manifested itself in congressional leadership fights.
In fact, this trend was evident at the congressional level before it became apparent in the Republican presidential primaries. Newt Gingrich replaced Bob Michel as the top Republican in the House several years after leading conservative opposition to George H.W. Bush’s tax increase. Not long after becoming the first GOP speaker in 40 years, Gingrich began to face conservative rebellions of his own.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan was a movement darling, frequently gracing the covers of conservative magazines. But like McConnell, he wasn’t as in touch with conservative activists and he climbed the leadership ladder in the traditional way.
If elected, Jordan would be a conservative speaker who rose up the ranks through conservative activist circles and is in touch with their passions. He might be more purely their speaker than even Gingrich.
McCarthy was thought to owe his speakership to the House GOP’s hardline conservatives. Jordan is one of them.
The question would be whether Jordan would then have greater success pushing conservative objectives as speaker or more credibility with conservative lawmakers when forced by House math to compromise.
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The alternative is that Jordan, long the rebel, would promptly face a rebellion himself.
But first Jordan has to get to 217 on the House floor, an accomplishment in itself.