Highlights:
Representative Jim Jordan and his allies have begun a right-wing pressure campaign against Republicans opposed to electing him speaker, working to unleash the rage of the party’s base voters against any lawmaker standing in the way of his election.
“You want to explain to your voters why you blocked Jordan?” Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, wrote on X. “Then bring it.”
The strategy is reminiscent of the bullying tactics that Mr. Jordan and his allies have used over the past decade to pull the G.O.P. further to the right, and borrows a page from former President Donald J. Trump, who is backing Mr. Jordan.
It is also an approach that helped propel the House G.O.P. into its current leadership crisis.
Mr. Jordan’s closeness with the former president has given him unparalleled cachet with the party base.
Amy Kremer, a political activist affiliated with the Tea Party movement and Mr. Trump who also leads Women for America First, which organized a “Stop the Steal” rally in 2021, posted a hit list of 12 [GOP House]members on Friday. She listed their office phone numbers and urged her followers to call them and tell them to support Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan’s supporters said his decision to send lawmakers home to their districts over the weekend rather than keeping them in Washington for one-on-one meetings to drum up support was a deliberate move to intensify grass-roots pressure on them to fall into line.
It was unclear whether the pressure campaign would be able to net Mr. Jordan the votes he needed as the second candidate put forth in recent days as the Republican nominee.
Some conservative strategists close to Mr. Jordan believe he will easily be able to win over his detractors, institutionalists who put a high premium on a functioning government and projecting normalcy. Unlike the hard right, the strategists argue, staging a floor revolt simply isn’t in their nature.
GOP primaries are almost never about courting moderates. Maybe if its an open primary.