A former Pennsylvania Republican congressman gloated over Rep. Jim Jordan’s failed effort to secure the necessary support to become speaker of the House on CNN Friday.
Jordan failed to secure the majority of votes needed to become speaker of the House of Representatives for the third time Friday, with 25 Republicans refusing to vote for him.
The House Republican Conference then removed him as speaker-designee by a 112-86 vote.
“They’ve been threatened. They’ve been insulted. They’ve been mocked. They’ve been told they have no spines, they’re invertebrates,” former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said on CNN. “Well, it seems like their spines are pretty damn stiff to me. They’ve had enough. This is a revenge of the RINOs. This is the squishes striking back, and I am a proud card-carrying member of the RINO squish and bedwetter caucus.”
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“This is the fight that needs to happen,” Dent added. “The institutionalists, the pragmatists versus the Trump populists who don’t have any kind of a philosophy, a governing philosophy, they’re just about making noise and causing disruption versus the people who are serious about doing the business of governing and want a policy agenda.”
Jordan received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement for speaker Oct. 5, but lost in a ballot to Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who withdrew after he failed to win sufficient backing.
“If they can’t get Patrick McHenry in there as the interim speaker, then they’re going to have to put together this bipartisan coalition I’ve been talking about,” Dent said. “I don’t see a way out because the — the pro-Trump guys, you know, they’re not going to vote for somebody like a Scalise or an establishment type, and now it looks like these establishment types aren’t going to support the Jim Jordan type of bomb throwers and noisemakers.”
The financial services industry reportedly favors Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, currently the acting speaker pro tempore of the House of Representatives, to be a permanent replacement for Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, who was ousted as speaker by a 216-210 vote Oct. 3. Jordan’s supporters have opposed expanding McHenry’s powers to serve as a temporary speaker.
“So they’re really at an impasse and they’re going to need Hakeem Jeffries help to get them out of this, just as they did on the debt ceiling, just as they did on the continuing resolution,” Dent continued.
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