As Fulcher, Simpson consider speaker vote on Jordan, consider his many past betrayals | Opinion

It appears more likely by the day that Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, could be the next U.S. House speaker, which seems par for the course in the slowly plodding disaster that is the House under modern Republican Party control.

Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, was from the beginning a full-throated Jordan backer. In an interview with Chuck Malloy last week, he gushed: “Jim is the real deal. For someone like me, he’s a conservative and a liberty-focused guy. He’s a friend and a good man.”

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, initially expressed firm opposition to Jordan, according to Roll Call, but his position appears to have softened. On Friday Simpson said he didn’t expect Jordan to get to the 217-vote threshold required to win, but that he would support Jordan if he clears the hurdle, according to John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News.

Both Simpson and Fulcher should think twice before backing Jordan for the sake of their country — and for their own sake.

Simply put, Jordan is a man who betrayed both his country and the people who counted on him most. And the best way to predict what someone will do in the future is to look at their past.

Jordan’s betrayal of his country is well-known, even if a significant portion of the Republican caucus doesn’t care anymore.

“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for Jan. 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives,” said Liz Cheney, who knows the evidence in detail from her service as vice-chair of the select committee that investigated Jan. 6. She warned that if the House GOP selects Jordan — who conspired with Trump to stop the certification of the 2020 election and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to set aside votes from states Trump lost, as ABC reported — Republicans will be “abandoning the Constitution.”

To state the obvious, Simpson and Fulcher should not abandon the Constitution by selecting as their leader someone who proudly tried to burn it.

But if patriotism isn’t enough to motivate them, perhaps self-interest will. The speaker leads the majority in much the way that a coach leads a team, and we know how those who have played for Jordan feel about him.

Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1995. During that period, team doctor Richard Strauss (who killed himself in 2005) sexually abused the young men Jordan was supposed to be training and leading. Many of the at-least 177 victims of Strauss’s sexual abuse (by the university investigation’s count) have subsequently come forward to say it was impossible that Jordan did not know what was going on right in front of his face.

“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” said Mike Schyck, a former wrestler at Ohio State who was victimized, in a recent interview with NBC.

Beyond the lack of basic human decency this decades-long failure to do the right thing shows in Jordan, it should present an important question of personal interest for Fulcher and Simpson: Do they want to be “his guys”?

“If early on he jumped in on our side and validated what we were saying, what everybody knew about what Dr. Strauss was doing to us, then this wouldn’t be happening,” Schyck told NBC. “But he decided early on, for reasons I still don’t understand, that he was going to deny knowing anything about this.”

If Fulcher and Simpson decide to back Jordan, they can’t rationally expect better treatment. So ignore the contrived pressure campaign that Jordan and his allies have cooked up, and try to find a House Republican with better character.

It shouldn’t be hard. There are about 220 who fit the bill, depending on where you place George Santos.

Update: 11:45 a.m. Tuesday. During the initial round of voting, Fulcher voted for Jordan. Simpson voted for Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, who has formally dropped out of the running.

Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.