Republicans need a speaker candidate blue-district Republicans can support
Tom Joyce
Video Embed
As House Republicans work on finding a new speaker, they must remember why they have a majority in the first place.
The GOP has a slim 221-212 majority because it holds seats in blue districts, including five that President Joe Biden won by double digits in the 2020 presidential election. Eighteen of the 221 seats are in districts Biden won, meaning the next House speaker must be someone these blue-district Republicans can support.
HOW HOUSE REPUBLICANS WILL PICK THEIR NEXT SPEAKER NOMINEE IN CROWDED FIELD
Unfortunately, the Republican caucus does not understand this problem.
Republicans nominated Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for speaker last week. Unsurprisingly, he failed. The 22 Republican Jordan detractors included five freshman representatives from districts Biden won in 2020, plus Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE). Bacon represents a district that gave Biden an electoral vote in 2020.
Jordan supports former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, was the Trump-backed candidate for speaker, voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results, and once defended a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. social media post that implied baseball legend Hank Aaron, who lived to be 86, died because he received a vaccination against coronavirus.
Anyone who spreads conspiracy nonsense about elections and vaccines and closely associates themselves with Trump, arguably the most disliked president of the polling era, will have a hard time earning the necessary support from blue-district Republicans.
However, given the crop of Republicans pursuing the speakership, many non-Jordan candidates are just as toxic for blue-district Republicans.
Reps. Kevin Hern (R-OK), Mike Johnson (R-LA), Byron Donalds (R-FL), Jack Bergman (R-MI), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Dan Meuser (R-PA), and Gary Palmer (R-AL) all voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results. Donalds, Bergman, Sessions, Meuser, and Palmer have all endorsed the Trump 2024 campaign.
Only 30% of people think Biden won the 2020 presidential election due to electoral fraud, according to a Monmouth University poll released earlier this year. Additionally, nearly half of likely GOP primary voters want someone other than Trump as their party’s nominee.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Given that congressional districts elect people to represent their values in Washington, it is fair to say that supporting politicians who fervently back Trump and his outrageous voter fraud claims would not represent the values of a district that Biden won, regardless of how one feels about the current president.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) and Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) are also running and are not pro-Trump. Hopefully, the GOP can unite behind a normal person who values the truth. If not, the party will have difficulty getting a new speaker.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.