I thought I would share this piece about Jim Jordan from 2016 just in case anyone forgets that this House circus started long before they invited their superstar clown Donald Trump into the tent:
Jordan won his House seat in 2006, the year Democrats took the majority, but he didn’t emerge as a force until five years later. Republicans reclaimed the House and elected him to lead the Republican Study Committee, a powerful faction within the GOP Conference focused on crafting policy. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) remembers turning to Ryan at the time and asking who he should vote for. “Jim Jordan, of course!” Ryan responded, according to Gowdy.
Jordan that year also befriended a bunch of firebrand freshmen who rode the 2010 tea party wave to Washington but didn’t quite fit in with their establishment colleagues. They admired Jordan for his conservative purity and they quickly formed an alliance.
Within six months atop the study committee, Jordan began to divide the Republican Conference. He and his new allies pushed Boehner to hold out for more spending cuts from Democrats before agreeing to raise the debt ceiling — even if it meant flirting with default — a ploy broadly viewed as a kamikaze mission. But Jordan felt Republicans could win, pointing to the anti-government spending sentiment pulsing through the country that year.
Boehner ignored Jordan and cut a deal with Democrats. But the episode established Jordan as a rising champion of the far right. And Boehner’s allies sensed a threat. The late Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette encouraged Boehner at the time to draw Jordan out of his seat through redistricting. Boehner declined, a decision that may have ultimately cost him his job.
The Freedom Caucus was born in 2015 after Jordan’s close friend, Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, lost his bid for Republican Study Committee chairman, an election some conservatives believed was rigged by leadership. Conservatives banded together in a bid to force leadership to pay attention to them. And who better to lead the charge than someone who’d shown he had no compunction about taking on Republican brass.
Boehner was immediately in their bull’s-eye. Within about nine months, the Freedom Caucus pulled off the unthinkable: Driving the most powerful Republican in the country to resign mid-term.
“John Boehner had a tough job — one of the toughest jobs a person could have,” said Jordan, who never criticized Boehner publicly and even begged Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina not to force Boehner out mid-session. “He had to deal with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and people like me, so that is not easy. “
Jordan and his followers haven’t given Ryan much breathing room. Among other things, they blocked him from passing a budget, the speaker’s top priority this year, because it didn’t cut spending enough; and tanked leadership’s response to the Orlando massacre because it wasn’t hawkish enough on terrorism.
“Leadership is definitely a little afraid of him,” said another senior Republican who asked not to be named.
Shortly after Ryan took over, Jordan said he encouraged him to “demonstrate that there is a new team in town now” by linking a bill halting Obama’s Syrian refugee program to must-pass government funding. Polls showed Americans were worried following an Islamic State-inspired mass shooting in California, and Jordan believed Republicans could leverage that advantage.
It was the kind of go-for-broke Freedom Caucus tactic that failed many times before. The difference between Jordan and the bulk of the GOP Conference is that he actually believes Republicans can win such a fight and that Democrats will blink if Republicans hold firm.
Ryan declined Jordan’s advice, however, and Jordan is still a little sour about it: “Why do we think it’s going to be different now if we’re not willing to pick one issue and stand firm for that one issue and win? Right now, [Democrats] think they can win on these negotiations every time!”
Jordan doesn’t look imposing. He’s short but fit — keeping himself in shape with a maniacal routine of push-ups and wide-rimmed pull-ups — and despite his tough-guy reputation, bears some Midwestern humility. He married his grade-school sweetheart, raised four kids in a small farmhouse and ranks among the lowest-net-worth members of Congress. He refuses to trash talk other Republicans, on or off the record. Even those who don’t like him say he’s good for his word.
But in the trenches of debate, he’s a fearsome competitor. When he’s interrogating an opposing witness at a hearing, he’s got a quick retort for everything, and gets so hot and animated that his Oversight colleagues say he’s easily the scariest questioner on the dais.
“He comes straight at you and he expects you to come straight at him,” said Gowdy, a friend of Jordan’s. “He doesn’t have time for games or finesse.”
His constituents love him for it. At a town hall in Amherst, Ohio, this month, one woman told him “we don’t want you to back down on [your investigations] in any way, shape or form.” Another applauded him for being what she called an authentic conservative in the House full of phonies. “Bless you, sir!” she said.
Other Republicans more prone to play ball with GOP leadership say their main beef with Jordan is over tactics, not ideology.
“I like Jim personally, and I respect that he is dedicated and passionate about the things he cares about, but in order to accomplish things, everybody needs to work as a team,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), a former federal prosecutor who tried to talk Jordan off the IRS impeachment warpath. “If you take the ball and say ‘my way or the highway,’ nothing gets done.”
Retiring Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), who resigned from the Freedom Caucus last year, said that while Jordan “does what he does out of a deep sense of conviction,” he should “spend more time persuading the conference to their view as opposed to making everybody capitulate.”
Jordan’s combativeness has even caused him to clash with conservative friends. He and Gowdy were often at odds during the Benghazi Committee investigation, several sources said. Gowdy was determined to show his probe wasn’t about Hillary Clinton; Jordan encouraged him to go for the jugular. The week the report was released, the two were seen engaged in a heated exchange on the House floor. Jordan ultimately released his own report accusing the administration of a political coverup, because Gowdy wouldn’t.
While Jordan says blocking bad legislation counts as a big success for the Freedom Caucus, he acknowledges that his group has made little headway passing its own legislation. “It’s tough to win the policy debate when you’re a 40-member body,” he said.
But instead of ditching his no-holds-barred approach, he’s trying to build a conservative army inside Congress to further boost his clout. Over the summer, he recruited Republican candidates who he thought might join the group if they win, and next year caucus members may make up a larger percentage of a smaller Republican Conference, giving Jordan and the Freedom Caucus more leverage.
His army is small but they are mighty.
He hasn’t changed and he’s been a model for all the nihilist, MAGA chaos agents who are making the GOP look like fools today. And this time he may just be on track to become the speaker, even though the smart money is on him wanting to be the Chairman of Judiciary so he can torture Democrats. Either way, this weirdo is one of the most powerful people in the US government. Good lord.