JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Ohio Representative Jim Jordan has failed in two votes this week to become Speaker of the House, and he’s the candidate Republican Congressman Aaron Bean supports as do most of the GOP members.
Conservatives have the majority in the House but have not been able to pull together enough votes to select a Speaker.
“He is extremely popular. He is a warrior when it comes to conservative values going forward,” Bean said when asked why he believed Jordan could unify the majority in the House after Jordan made it clear that he thought the 2020 election was stolen.
Rep. John Rutherford from Jacksonville is one of the members not voting for Jordan.
Democrats said the House is in chaos because of Republicans, a statement that gets Bean animated. Kent Justice played a statement where Pete Aguilar said, in part, “We’re here because the House has been thrown into chaos. We are here because this hollow chamber has been led to a breaking point by two dangerous forces: extremism and partisanship. The choice before us is simple: come together on a bipartisan path forward or take us over the cliff.”
This was a statement that Bean did not take favor to.
“Let me say the word that I’m thinking of right now,” Bean said in response to Aguilar’s statement. “Horse hockey, horse hockey to everything that that gentleman just talking about. Horse hockey. He is the party that sided with the extremists. For him to say his party jumped in and and said it’s all on Republicans. Kevin McCarthy went to bat to put together a plan to have continued government where we don’t shut down, where our troops get paid.
Bean said he does not agree with Aguilar and called it “painful” to have to listen to his repeated words, saying that it caused him “great angst.”
Republicans held a four-hour conference meeting on Capitol Hill Thursday. The meeting reportedly got so heated that tempers flared and words -- including swearing -- were exchanged aimed at Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who led the effort to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House.
“I think the entire conference screamed at him, listen, the whole country I think would scream at Matt Gaetz right now. Remember it was the crazy eights led by Matt Gaetz and every single Democrat that put us into this situation,” McCarthy said.
Bean refused to criticize any other Republicans and yet agreed the GOP needs to come together.
“Well does it resonate that we need the leadership? And I totally agree. We need leadership to move forward. We’re like a boat right now without a rudder. So the House of Representatives is drifting. But putting a rudder on is the utmost urgency for our conference,” Bean said
Many Republicans said it’s vital to solve the Speaker question with deadlines pending on government spending and the White House request for aid to Israel.
Congressman Kat Cammack from Gainesville spoke after the proposal to give power to interim Speaker Patrick McHenry.
“It certainly does not have the support in conference and to bring it to the floor. It would have to survive with Democratic votes. We’re currently sitting on a tinderbox. So to do that, it would set off the fuse that would certainly end in civil war within the GOP, and I don’t believe that anybody wants to do that,” Cammack said.
Bean will appear on This Week in Jacksonville on Sunday.