Rep. Jim Jordan isn't exactly the man he used to be. That could be the best news House Republicans have had in some time.
That midterm-shellacked conference on Tuesday chose the indefatigable Mr. Jordan as their new leader. A slacker press corps greeted the results with its usual round of superficial headlines, most summing up the left's disdain for the well-known Ohio Republican. Among the terms used to describe the incoming minority leader: "pugilistic," "pugnacious," "combative," "brawler," "attack dog," "hard-line," "bomb thrower," "enforcer." The coverage explained that with this choice Republicans were doubling down on fight, fight, fight.
Mr. Jordan is a wrestler, both literally and figuratively. Yet the headlines ignore what more he has become during nearly 20 years in Congress. The Jordan fighting spirit remains, and it will matter in a GOP Washington under a Democratic assault. But it's Mr. Jordan's principles and relationships -- and his credibility -- that offer the GOP its best shot at coming back from a midterm humiliation.
The competition itself was a surprisingly good moment for Republicans -- a stark contrast with leadership elections stretching back a decade. In the wake of John Boehner's 2015 resignation, Paul Ryan won with strong support, but only after a messy conservative rebellion quashed Kevin McCarthy's bid. Mr. McCarthy's run for minority leader in 2018 was contested, while his 2023 pitch for speaker required 15 rounds of balloting. He didn't last a year. Only after 22 days of legislative paralysis and multiple failed nominations did the GOP land on the consensus pick of Mike Johnson. This election, by contrast, featured two deeply qualified candidates, both of whom engendered respect and enthusiasm. Mr. Jordan prevailed over Steve Scalise, but the race was spirited and close, and the conference came out united.
This fractious history is also the story of Mr. Jordan's transformation into today's leader. In 2015 Mr. Jordan helped found the House Freedom Caucus, positioning it as the party's conscience on fiscal discipline and limited government. The caucus's opposition to Mr. Boehner helped force him out. It snarled bills. It successfully blocked McCarthy's 2015 bid. Mr. Jordan ran a hard-fought, though unsuccessful, race against Mr. McCarthy in 2018. All this was the foundation of the Ohioan's reputation as insurgent. Mr. Boehner once agreed with an interviewer that Mr. Jordan was a "political terrorist": "I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart."
What too many miss is the building Mr. Jordan has done, especially since 2018 -- the reason he was elected this week. After losing in 2018, he turned around to build a strategic partnership with Mr. McCarthy. Mr. Jordan pursued conference priorities in his committees, while Mr. McCarthy consulted closely with him on legislative issues and made him his go-to guy for high-stakes assignments. By 2023, Mr. Jordan was nominating Mr. McCarthy for speaker, and he helped convince conservative holdouts. Along the way, Mr. Jordan became a fundraising powerhouse, helped re-elect swing and moderate Republicans, and built alliances with incoming members. He went from being a bridge between conservatives and moderates to a leader for the party as a whole. He now has fight, principles and trust -- at least for the moment.
Individual politicians aside, this is a moment for the House Freedom Caucus and the conservative movement -- and at a crucial time. The GOP in recent years has focused too much on politics over good policy, driven by a Trump-Vance White House obsessed with electoral gamesmanship (voting-rule changes, gerrymandering) and buying the loyalty of an amorphous "populist" coalition. The midterms show how well that's working. If ever there was a time for Republicans to re-embrace the principles that Mr. Jordan's wing has long advocated, it's now. That will be crucial not just for rebuilding a reform-oriented House GOP minority, but for laying the groundwork for a future majority and a principled 2028 presidential nominee.
Mr. Jordan is no legislative powerhouse; his talent is oversight. But he's managed conservative policy shops, he knows his people, and his best bet is to tap and elevate his conference's most dynamic idea-producers, turning them into the stars of the GOP. This won't happen overnight -- not amid a generation of Republican lawmakers who think their only job is to "own" the other side and who live in fear of the Twitter mob. It won't happen at all unless it is made a top priority.
What Mr. Jordan has going for him is his conservative credibility -- try casting a "pugilistic" "bomb thrower" as a RINO. The question is how aggressively he uses his selling skills to convince his crew to tackle the issues Americans want tackled -- healthcare, spending, government reform, welfare. That, and how well he can use his trusted relationship with Mr. Trump to waylay bad ideas and carve out space for his conference to forge a brighter path.
The election of Mr. Jordan at least raises the possibility of a twist on the mantra: MIGA. Make Ideas Great Again. It's overdue.
---