Via The Hill: Jim Jordan elected minority leader by House GOP.
House Republicans elected Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Tuesday to lead their diminished conference in the next Congress, marking an extraordinary leap for a conservative icon who made his name on Capitol Hill antagonizing party leaders.
Jordan defeated Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the outgoing House majority leader, in a closed-door election in the bowels of the Capitol Visitor Center by a vote of 106-73. Scalise has been in the top echelons of GOP leadership since 2014 — holding the No. 2 spot in the conference since 2019; his allies touted that experience as a reason to put the Louisiana Republican at the helm of the party.
So, on the one hand, Jim Jordan should be nowhere near power (so the good news is that House Minority Leader is a position of little power, especially given the size of the caucus after noon on January 3rd). On the other hand, there is something to be said for the GOP just admitting what it has become, and not even trying to put someone up for the spotlight who could, at least on occasion, place nice for the cameras. Steve Scalise can pull that off more than Jordan can.
Also, for a party that is supposedly super focused on protecting the children (especially athletes!) as well as being the self-proclaimed arbiters of sexual mores in the country, they do keep finding themselves with leaders who are at least adjacent to sexual scandals. A reminder from ABC News about three years ago: Rep. Jim Jordan ‘turned a blind eye’ to sex abuse allegations, says former OSU wrestler amid House speaker battle.
Along those lines, one of the new members of Jordan’s caucus will be Brent Taylor (R-TN), who won as part of the TN gerrymandering scheme that cracked the black vote in Memphis. Taylor (no relation) has won a close race wherein his sexting appears to have been forgiven by enough white Evangelicals in TN to give him the seat (that is both snark and almost certainly empirically true).
Here’s the story from the Nashville Scene: Brent Taylor’s Sexting Problem.
State Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) has sent unsolicited nude photos as recently as 2021. He dismisses his past sexual advances as “youthful indiscretions” that marked his 30-year marriage.
Multiple sources say they had received or seen nude photos from Taylor, who is running for U.S. Congress in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. Taylor acknowledged to the Scene that he had sent nude photos in the past but dismissed them as mistakes that have since been forgiven by his wife Kimberly.
“As I near 60 years old, the expiration date has come and gone on any of my youthful indiscretions,” Taylor tells the Scene when asked about a history of texting nude pictures. “Whatever story you think you’ve got, my wife is well aware of and we’ve worked through it a long time ago. My god and my wife have forgiven me, and I would consider everyone else doing the same.”
Ok, so I wasn’t a math major, so bear with me. He sent texts in 2021, which was 5 years ago. He is currently 60 years old. That would make him, let’s see…55 years old in 2021 (maybe 54). So, call me crazy, but that doesn’t seem like a “youth indiscretion” to me.
Seriously, is it that hard for a party that is allegedly extremely concerned with sexual relations to be plain vanilla sex between married heterosexuals to find such people for their party? (Narrator: Yes, it is.)
