CNN Airs Threatening Voicemail from Jim Jordan Supporter to Wife of Rep Who Voted against Him

“Why is your husband such a pig? Why would he get on TV and make an asshole of himself? Because he’s a deep state prick? Because he doesn’t represent the people? So what we’re gonna do is we’re going fucking follow you all over the place. We’re gonna be up your ass fucking nonstop. We are now Antifa. We’re gonna do what the left does because your fucking faggot of a husband gets on TV, ‘Oh, the bad guys, they did stuff. I’m gonna vote for Kevin McCarthy,’ — a piece of shit.”

– Anonymous caller’s voicemail message to the wife of an unnamed Republican congressman who voted against Jim Jordan for House speaker.

Jim Jordan Is No ‘Transdimensional Warlock’; He’s an ‘Idiot’

“The fact that you and I are living in a world where it is at least notionally possible that Jim Jordan would become the speaker of the people’s house and in line to the presidency of the United States is so utterly fantastic, not because Jim Jordan is some, transdimensional warlock. But because he’s an idiot… These Frankensteins were never supposed to get off the table.”

— Tom Nichols, on the Bulwark podcast.

Why Would You Want to Be Speaker Anyway?

“The last three decades have seen an endless succession of coups, scandals, and humiliations, at times reducing the position of Speaker of the House to a hollowed-out title hardly anybody of note even wanted to claim. By this point, the rituals of plotting and counterplotting are so deeply ingrained that every new Republican Speaker is greeted with built-in opposition and ready speculation as to who will take over as the next Speaker after the newly inaugurated one is inevitably deposed. … The congressional Republican fratricide era began with the rise of Newt Gingrich (more on him shortly). But its intellectual roots stretch back to the early 1960s, when the upstart conservative movement first crawled out of the primordial ooze and set out to seize control of the party.”

Jonathan Chait

From Nothing Speaker to Speaker Nothing

“I didn’t think Kevin McCarthy was going to be ousted from his position of speaker of the House. I believed you couldn’t beat something with nothing. … Well, right now, America has Speaker Nothing. Matt Gaetz cobbled together enough Republican votes with Democratic votes to get rid of McCarthy, but at least for now, no one knows who, if anyone, could garner enough votes to become the new speaker.”

Jim Geraghty