What the defeat of Jim Jordan means for future of Trump and Trumpism 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) suffered a humiliating defeat in his bid to become Speaker of the House of Representatives. The Republicans cannot have wanted to stretch out this spectacle of their astonishing dysfunction, but even the strong desire to have a Speaker in place could not erase his long years of abrasiveness, bullying and grandstanding.  

Right from the start, his campaign to become Speaker of the House was shadowed by a deep irony. Throughout his career in the lower chamber, Jordan’s most consistent commitment has been to do everything in his power to oppose the House leadership.  

As Jonathan Blitzer puts it in a New Yorker article, “Colleagues used to call him ‘the other Speaker of the House’ because of his frequent maneuvers against leadership.” 

America dodged a bullet when two dozen Republican members of the House stood firm and said no to Jim Jordan. If Jordan had been elected Speaker, it would have signaled, as John Cassidy notes, “that the Republican Party on Capitol Hill had formally accepted its role as a mere appendage to an insurrectionary right-wing movement led by a self-aggrandizing megalomaniac.”  

The willingness of his GOP opponents to block Jordan’s bid to be Speaker is reminiscent of the courage shown by countless Republican officeholders in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.  

Like them, the never-Jordan crew stood up to the threats and intimidation. Like the heroes of 2020, some of them were unwilling to throw in their lot with election denialism and with a naked power grab. 

Names like those of Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Steve Womack of Arkansas now stand alongside Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensburger and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers as leaders who refused to go along with Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.

By comparison, Jordan’s refusal to renounce election denialism cost him support in his bid to become Speaker. 

The rejection of Jim Jordan was not only a defeat for him, it also was a decisive defeat for Donald Trump and Trumpism.  

It is no secret that Jim Jordan has been one of Donald Trump’s most loyal and ardent supporters. During Trump’s 2016 election campaign, Jordan supported the future president and, as Cassidy says, “made his bones with the candidate by publicly campaigning for him shortly after the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape was released.” 

Four years later, after the 2020 election, Jordan “repeatedly expounded Trump’s baseless charges that the election had been stolen. On January 5, 2021 … he forwarded to his friend Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, a text message … that outlined a legal strategy to overturn the election, and on the following morning he spoke with Trump himself for ten minutes before the former President headed out to address his supporters at the Ellipse.” 

Just before he left office, Trump rewarded Jordan for his loyalty by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. The citation accompanying the Medal praised Jordan for his efforts to “unmask the Russia hoax and take on Deep State corruption.” 

At the time, Trump explained why he thought Jordan deserved the Medal of Freedom by saying that Jordan “is a warrior for me.” Trump also rewarded Jordan’s loyalty by offering his full-throated endorsement of the Ohio congressman’s candidacy for House Speaker. In an Oct. 5 post on Truth Social, the former president wrote that Jim Jordan will be “a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!” 

But the bad news for Trump was that his endorsement didn’t save Jordan.  

Not only did it not help, as former Rep. Mark Sanford said, “I think the Trump endorsement hurt him because at the end of the day, he already had the firebrand caucus. Now, all of a sudden, you’re making, you know, Republican moderates in New York – there are 11 of them – nervous about, ‘Oh my goodness, I gotta defend this in my district? That we have a Speaker who’s been endorsed by Trump, who’s not popular in my district?’ I think it complicate(d) things actually for Jordan.” 

It also didn’t help Jordan that he resorted to Trumpian tactics to persuade his colleagues to support his bid to be Speaker. Like Trump, Jordan and his allies equated bullying and threatening people with persuading them. 

Jordan followed the Trump playbook and mobilized the MAGA base in that effort. That playbook’s first principle: “do whatever it takes to undermine your opponent and then play a game of chicken, forcing the other guy to duck.” 

But, as Keith Naughton observed, “Jordan is not Trump. Jordan does not have the charisma and feel for the room Trump has. Worse, Jordan does not have Trump’s power — which means his game of chicken simply won’t work.” 

Perhaps this is why, as Blitzer observes, “Many who opposed Jordan, recognizing his overwhelming power with the base, were careful not to antagonize him — not that it mattered.” 

Blitzer explained that “The wife of a Nebraska moderate received menacing text messages and phone calls from anonymous critics of her husband. A congresswoman from Iowa fielded what her office called ‘credible’ death threats. E-mails had also been circulating. Producers from Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News were contacting Jordan’s opponents with a script making it clear that they’d be forced to answer for their intransigence.” 

For Jordan’s Republican opponents, “It was unnerving to see how quickly Jordan’s bullying, honed by tormenting Democrats, could be directed at members of his own Party.” 

The Washington Post reported that “Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) remained dug in despite revealing that his wife felt compelled to sleep with a loaded gun. Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.) cited the bullying as a reason he flipped his vote against Jordan on the second ballot and wouldn’t go back. Others said flatly that they won’t give in to threats, casting their votes as a principled stand against the intimidation.” 

The Post’s look at the breakdown of those who opposed Jordan can’t be reassuring for Trump’s presidential campaign; Jordan’s opponents came from “the less-extreme, less-pro-Trump end of the spectrum. The opposite end of the spectrum from Jordan himself, in fact.” 

As the Post found, Jordan lost support “from the less-conservative arm of his caucus and from legislators in Biden or swing districts.” 

The reference to the swing districts is the really bad news for Trump. Not only did neither his endorsement nor his tactics help Jordan, but everything also adds up to more evidence that Trump may have trouble with independent voters who are generally decisive in American presidential elections. 

In the end, the forces that did in Jordan may help lay the groundwork for Trump in his effort to recapture the White House. 

Austin Sarat (@ljstprof) is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Amherst College.