When Paul Ryan was drafted into the House speakership following John Boehner’s resignation in 2015, he came with a few demands. Chief among them was that the House had to modify the rules for the motion to vacate, which allowed just a single member to trigger a vote to remove the speaker of the House. The rule clouded the final year of Boehner’s speakership; eight years later, it has now been the undoing of Kevin McCarthy and ground business in the House to a halt.
The motion to vacate is a cancer. It silently hangs over the speaker at all times, stealing away the flexibility that is needed to effectively legislate and empowering the least serious of lawmakers. It is also at the root of the deep anger and distrust that has been building among Republicans for years.
Having worked for both Boehner and Ryan, I find it surreal that Jordan could be the next speaker of the House.
The House GOP simply cannot be fixed without reforming the motion to vacate. While there should be some mechanism for removing a speaker, it must have a much higher threshold for triggering than just one member. Jim Jordan — one of the people who first weaponized the current rule — may be the only person capable of defusing it.
Having worked for both Boehner and Ryan, I find it surreal that Jordan could be the next speaker of the House. He was a thorn in Ryan’s side and made life hell at times for Boehner. Jordan was among the House Freedom Caucus members who plotted to take out Boehner with a motion to vacate. After Boehner resigned, Ryan ultimately reached a handshake agreement with the Freedom Caucus to not use the motion against him. But that’s not a durable solution, and a formal change to the rules must be adopted by the full House.
The job of speaker requires difficult decisions, policymaking nuance and compromise. Jordan has rejected these through his career, instead preaching rigidity, purity and the fanciful notion that any conservative outcome can be had simply by fighting harder. From big fiscal deals with Obama to the Trump plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, time and again Jordan worked to torpedo the plans of House leaders. In the process, though, he became a conservative hero. And that credibility with the right may be what’s necessary to fix the motion to vacate.
Dozens of more moderate House Republicans have already said the rule must change before accepting a new speaker. But doing so requires 218 votes in the House. There are only 222 Republicans, and Democrats have made clear they’re not interested in helping clean up the mess the GOP created. (Under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrats raised that threshold to a majority of either party, before McCarthy returned it to the single-vote requirement earlier this year.) That means nearly every Republican will need to vote to change the threshold — including many of those who just used it to oust McCarthy.
At least some conservative hard-liners will resist changing the current rules, which give them power over the speaker. There is, however, an emerging grand bargain that could give conservatives their hard-line speaker while ending the madness it created. And Jordan is uniquely positioned to see that bargain through.
I believe Scalise has the vision, skills and relationships to be the better speaker. But I don’t get a vote.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and Jordan are both solid conservatives. Having worked close to him for years, I believe Scalise has the vision, skills and relationships to be the better speaker. But I don’t get a vote. And it may indeed be the distrust that comes with his many years in elected leadership that won’t allow conservatives to give away their power over a potential Speaker Scalise. I fear he would run into a brick wall if he tried to modify the rule.
But Jordan’s credibility with the contrarian conservatives may give them confidence that this is a speaker they can trust without needing to hold a proverbial gun to his head. A few conservatives who resisted the McCarthy speakership have already said this is a trade they might make.
For all the reasons that conservatives like Jordan, moderates are wary. They understandably see him a threat to legislative progress and even their jobs. He has always been reckless with the politics facing swing-seat Republicans. But if Jordan can pledge that he’d be different as speaker and that he alone can rid the House of this destabilizing status quo, moderates may be willing to take that risk.
If Jordan was given flexibility to operate without the motion hanging over his head, the question is whether he would use it. There’s good reason to be skeptical of the man Boehner called a “legislative terrorist” (and worse). Yet as speaker, Jordan would quickly learn that achieving legislative outcomes requires more than just some fight.
It humors me to imagine him standing before the House GOP urging his colleagues to vote for a budget compromise with Democrats. But that’s the job, and the already difficult work is that much harder when a handful of backbench malcontents can fire you on the spot. If the current motion to vacate remains in place, we can expect that the next Republican speakership will come to the same inglorious end. The only path to a working GOP House is breaking this futile cycle.