Rep. Blake Moore: ‘We can’t waste another day,’ as Jim Jordan loses 2nd speaker’s vote

House Republicans should worry less about who they pick to be their speaker than they do about electing someone quickly to address the multiple crises brewing at home and abroad, Utah Republican Rep. Blake Moore said Wednesday.

Moore’s comments came just hours before Ohio congressman Jim Jordan’s campaign for House speaker received a potential death blow, failing to secure a majority in a floor vote by an even larger margin than Tuesday’s attempt.

The display of Republican disunity is just the latest example of how party infighting and warped incentives have damaged the institutional procedures that allow Congress to function, Moore said, and have delayed action on the country’s most pressing problems with no clear way out.

“We can’t waste another day,” Moore said in an interview with the Deseret News. “We have to finish the appropriations process. We have to make sure we avoid a government shutdown on Nov. 17.”

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The People’s House has been locked in an increasingly frustrating paralysis for two weeks, ever since a small group of Republicans joined the entire House Democratic conference to remove former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after he struck a bipartisan deal to extend government funding through mid-November.

McCarthy’s dramatic ouster left GOP lawmakers reeling, Moore said, and after a short-lived speaker’s bid from House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and an apparently doomed attempt by Jordan, who is chair of the House Judiciary Committee and co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, the dominant feeling surrounding the chamber’s top leadership position is uncertainty.

The two most likely scenarios are that nearly all Republicans settle on a consensus figure — something they have failed to do so far. Or that a bipartisan faction of House moderates votes to empower the Republican Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry — an idea that has been floated by a growing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

But until the position is filled, must-pass spending bills and aid to embattled allies, Israel and Ukraine, will have to wait.

Will Jim Jordan get the votes he needs to become speaker?

“I don’t know if Jordan has the votes,” Moore said. “Jim Jordan, Scalise, McCarthy ... anybody that’s been mentioned for this, knows we have to get these things done. We can’t do it without a speaker. So, that’s why we need to figure something out.”

After Wednesday’s vote for House speaker — the 17th this year — the Grand Old Party appeared no closer to figuring things out.

Despite receiving the support of House leadership, including McCarthy and Scalise, and an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, Jordan was rejected by 20 representatives Tuesday, and the gap widened by two votes on Wednesday, sending the House into recess.

Jordan and his allies have said he will call for additional rounds of voting. However, holdouts have implied that their ranks will only grow with every vote.

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Moore, who opposed McCarthy’s removal and originally backed Scalise as his replacement, said “the precedent and the conference rules dictate that we support the conference nominee, and that’s the way that it still exists, that’s the way that it should be done.” So, despite having some widely-shared grievances over the way Jordan undermined Scalise’s speakership bid, Moore now supports Jordan, along with Utah Reps. Burgess Owens and John Curtis.

“Right now, Jim Jordan, as he’s the conference nominee, is in a really crucial spot because he can bring along people that would otherwise not vote for something,” Moore said, referring to Jordan’s credibility among the conference’s most conservative members. “And so that’s a unique aspect that Jim Jordan can bring — he can bring the conference together to go advance some key pieces of legislation.”

However, while Moore sees Jordan as the best chance at getting the House back to work and scoring conservative wins, he’s far from confident Jordan will come out of this with the gavel in hand.

The consequence of broken precedent

The precedent of falling in line behind the majority party’s nominee for speaker was “obliterated” in January, Moore says, when a dozen or so Republican holdouts forced McCarthy into a record-breaking, 15-round speaker’s battle. And a similar situation is playing out now.

“I think the problem with Congress in general is that once you move past a precedent, it is gone forever,” Moore said. “Then you add in the unique nature of a narrow majority, then all of a sudden a handful of people have outsized influence.”

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• Rep. John Curtis supports Jim Jordan as speaker, says he will avoid government shutdown

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House Republicans, and prospective Republican speakers, can only afford to lose four votes on any motion. This opens up the nation’s largest governing body to outcomes that most lawmakers oppose but that a small minority is able to bring about by capitalizing on partisan animosity, Moore says.

“We need to come together,” Moore said. “We need to figure out a path forward. And I’m hopeful that we can do that sooner than later.”