Washington Examiner investigations editor Sarah Bedford said Republicans must now grapple with who will lead their new minority after the party’s massive losses in midterm elections.
“I think that there’s a lot of interest in Jim Jordan here,” Bedford said Wednesday on The Hugh Hewitt Show. “I mean, [Steve] Scalise was part of the House Republican leadership that presided over these types of losses and obviously, I mean, this was no splitting, no two ways about it, an anti-Republican wave.”
Bedford said voters have signaled a potential “repudiation” of Republican leadership, and now the party has to prepare for change. Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Steve Scalise (R-LA) could be vying for the House minority leader position; however, Jordan has the advantage of not being associated with leadership after party losses, Bedford said.
“So I wonder if the conference is going to be hungry to bring in somebody who was not a part of leadership before all of these losses, and Jim Jordan is the type of attack dog,” Bedford said.
While the minority’s leader is primarily symbolic, Bedford said, Jordan is better positioned to serve in the role over Scalise and current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
Bedford said Republicans may be reflecting on their losses, wondering whether they spent too much time on other legislation that wasn’t focused on affordability. Voters said in 2024 that affordability was the issue they cared about most, she added.
However, President Donald Trump and Republicans have tried to justify rising costs due to the Iran war, instead of addressing them, and they pushed legislation unrelated to the “affordability crisis,” such as the SAVE Act, Bedford said.
“It’s an important piece of legislation and certainly popular. Voter ID measures passed in a lot of the places where they were put to voters as ballot questions without being presented as with Republican candidates attached,” Bedford said.
ACCIDENTAL WINNERS FROM THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS
Affordability has been a “destabilizing force” across the country and caused massive shifts even among red states.
“When you look at how much these states swung, like Texas, for example, swinging 20-plus points in a span of two years,” Bedford said, “that’s not a battleground state. That’s not a swing state. We’re talking about a really destabilizing force in the affordability crisis.”