‘Rise of the House Appropriators’: GOP Strategists Notes ‘It Isn’t Terribly Sexy,’ But Serious Legislators Tanked Jim Jordan

Former GOP strategist Doug Heye explained on CNN on Tuesday why Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) fell far short of becoming House speaker during the first-floor vote with him as a nominee.

“One of the really interesting things, what we’re seeing is that a lot of these no votes or whether they’re voting for Scalise or McCarthy is really the rise of the House appropriators,” Heye argued, adding:

And why have we had government shutdowns and a lot of the chaos over these past few years? It’s been the failure to have a working appropriations process, which isn’t terribly sexy, but this is what Jordan has said he’s going to try and do. And obviously, that’s been on hold for a while.

But if I could say one thing, a lot of this conversation has been Jim Jordan and Donald Trump. Donald Trump caused Jim Jordan. This all predates Donald Trump by years.

“This is the Tea Party election. This is the pick of Sarah Palin, Eric Cantor, my old boss,” Heye continued, adding:

[Cantor’s] primary loss, the 2013 government shutdown, staffing decisions that Steve Scalise made against Jim Jordan. There’s a whole lot going on here. And we’re talking about a coal mine that is filled with canaries. Donald Trump just came in was the great disruptor on what already existed.

Jordan lost the vote for speaker on Tuesday as 20 GOP House members voted against him, while he can only afford to lose four.

Watch the full clip above via CNN.

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