Jim Jordan, local GOP favorite with party near death

As the Republican Party slams its internecine combat into finding somebody silly enough to take the job that John Boehner is leaving behind,  among the leaders of the fringe's weapons of mass destruction is Rep. Jim Jordan,  the chairman of the  House Freedom Caucus.  We need not mention that any time you see "freedom" in  a group's  title, you can be sure that it is conveniently rooted in  some crazy interplanetary cult that  has taken over the Republican Party.

It's also an element of Jordan's political profile that he is from southwestern Ohio and had a leading hand in hounding Boehner,  his Ohio neighbor,  into impending retirement.

It wasn't that long ago  - March 28, to be precise - that Jordan was hailed as the featured speaker in a party invitation to the Summit County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner, an annual event celebrating identity theft.  Signed by Party Chairman Alex Arshinkoff and his likely successor, Bryan  C. Williams, Jordan  was praised with breathless text.

It noted that Jordan, a former OSU wrestling coach who is said to live on a farm,  is "second to none"  as an outspoken watchdog and "a consistent and a straightforward  critic of the Obamacare trainwreck" as well as other things.  If you wanted to hear the rest of it from the party throne, it would have  cost you $50 a ticket to get into the room for dinner.The letter didn't mention that Jordan was also in the upper tier of those who preferred a government shutdown as a measure to overturn Obamacare.

Superlatives have never been Arshinkoff's weakest oratorical skill but it does seem odd that he would have chosen a hard right party-dissembler  to entertain  his people in a night out.  Even Ray Bliss would have been condemned by the Jordans now running the party.

So I'll let some counter-point slip in from David Brooks, a conservative columnist who is having none of Arshinkoff's version of what's shining so brightly in the upheaval.
Brooks writes that the "new Republican faction regards the messy  business of politics as soiled and impure.  Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are refarded as aliens.  Political identitity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal."

Or as Gene Lyons, National Memo columnist put it:  "The 'Freedom caucus' not only can't govern, they don't appear to believe in governance.  Hence the 58 futile show votes to repeal Obamacare, which accomplished absolutely nothing in real political terms."

Wordsmith McCarthy's untrustable dictionary

It was not a good week for words in the political arena.   Let me show you:

Kevin McCarthy, a minor league prospect to succeed Speaker John Boehner, described Hillary Clinton as "untrustable".   Even if you grant the  guy from California some rein as a wordsmith,  it may not guarantee him that he will be promoted. Indeed, some of his colleagues in the House prefer to call him a pleasant "hack".

Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson, a soft- voiced hard rightest,  warned New Hampshire voters that America is heading toward Nazi control in the highest places. "If you go back and look at the  history of the world, tyranny and despotism and how it starts,it has a lot to do with control of thought and control of speech," he said.  But he controlled  his own thoughts when he only implied that President Obama was  the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. "I'm not going to go into that," he said. "I think that example is pretty clear."

Jeb! Bush disappointed those who believed he had a chance to be the only sane candidate in the GOP field  because of his dynastic genes, skipped a definitive response on gun control in the wake of the Oregon massacre  by saying, '"We're in difficult times in our country ... Stuff happens".   Jeb!  is new at the presidential campaign game and needs a lot more work on bumper sticker neologisms.

John Kasich, soldiering on and on for an American Miracle  despite his two pct. approval rating in the national polls, mixed his own brand of hard-shell conservatism  with cautious pragmatism as a gun-rights advocate by dodging the issue of gun control:  "Stripping law-abiding citizens of their guns, I just don't know.  I don't believe it would get the job done.  I just don't."  As a Plunderbund writer reported, guv, "Never mind that nobody serious on this issue is suggesting we strip law-abiding citizens of their guns."    Time for Kasich to get back, in his prosaic words,  to "leading America back to prosperity".

Finally, can't ignore the wisdom of Plain Dealer columnist  Kevin O'Brien, a guardian of the Chicken Coop Fringe, who believes the GOP needs to pursue its destiny with a kick -ass conservative to succeed Boehner,  who got too little "rope"  in  defining the GOP's  pit bull playbook.

O'Brien's soaring  recommendations included devout conservative  Rep. Jim Jordan,  the Ohio farm resident who now leads the untrustable GOP's Freedom Caucus - another neologism that connects a pair of mutually exclusive words on Capitol Hill,where dictionaries  are seldom found open..  .

With Boehner out, the crazies will romp even more

A moment of silence for John Boehner, please.  The dour weepy House speaker, I mean.  Remember?

A square peg in a deep round hole dug by the beastly carnivores in the Republican caucus who , of all things,  considered him too liberal  for their suicidal quest to rule anybody who wasn't as certifiably crazy.  His efforts to please often led him at times to be certifiably crazy , too.  The more than 50 failed attempts to kill Obamacare in the House.    The loopy invitation to Bibi Netanyahu to be his guest to kill the Iran deal.

Folks, don't let them fool you.  With Boehner's opponents, it has nothing to do with ideology.  Instead, it springs from idiot-ology.  They would shut down the government over Planned Parenthood, for God's sake?

We normally would say history won't be kind for such servility by the speaker in the face of his Potomac enemies.  In this instance, Boehner fell  on his sword, saying enough is enough as he made instant history to save future historians the trouble of panning him. .

Among the Ohioan's more toxic Republican tormentors was his fellow Buckeye  from a farm in southwestern Ohio, Rep. Jim Jordan, a possessed  hoofbeater who heads the congressional Freedom Caucus  and is regarded around Capitol Hill as in the arch-conservative crazy class.

Summit County Republicans may know him as a featured guest at one of the local party's
 (i.e., Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's) glistening dinners.  On other festive occasions as the locals moved farther to the right, Alex also enjoyed the camaraderie on the dinner dais  of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in their Sunday clothes. Nothing reslly worked as the chairman continued to  raise money for local candidates who didn't win, including former Republican mainstay, failed former Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Robart.

I wasn't among Boehner's fans, but when the wild bunch now shaping the party
talked of impeaching the speaker (Jordan thought it might be nice if a strong
Tea Partier challenged the speaker in his own district) I at least had a shiver over how far the GOP has fallen. And will continue to fall.

Am I right, Sen.McConnell?  You could be next.  It would be ironic, I'd think, that as the one who dedicated himself to the instant demise of President Obama, you might be gone before the president.

Portman says he would tag along with Trump

Ohio's tag-along Republican Sen. Rob  Portman says he fully intends to support Donald  Trump if the demonizing carnival barker is  the nominee.

If so, I have a vision of him in workaday apparel tagging along at Trump's side across Ohio, just as the senator did in 2012 with Mitt Romney.  Who knows in this crazy crowd whether Portman might be thinking veep, although you have to wonder whether Trump would want anybody so meek and mild sharing the center ring with him.  

But you must also wonder why Portman committed himself so early to any choice.

He's  facing a tough challenge  from ex-Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland in the 2016 Senate race even though the Koch Brothers have claimed the senator's  obedience to their causes by chipping in $1.4 million for an early media blitz.

It's  Ohio, I know, a swing state,  if not  swinging state, where  GOP candidates take no chances in the Big Picture.

 Remember that Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine jumped ship on Romney in 2012 in mid-campaign and endorsed Rick Santorum.  The AG decided Rick was going to win, a thought that Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff probably shared with him while inviting Santorum to be the star of a big county Republican fundraiser.  The chairman even staged his poll of the feeders at the event and boasted that Santorum had virtually run the table.

P.S. As long as we've mentioned the Republican-style Summit fund-raisers, one even hosted Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the Ultra Conservative U.
S. House Freedom Caucus.  Keep in mind that Jordan is now threatening to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood. 

Jordanites accuse Boehner Republicans of cannibalism

Republicans  who will be laying down $50 or more for the Summit County party's annual Lincoln (!) Day dinner Saturday night will be treated to an upfront look at the guy who has dedicated himself to tearing the national party into oblivion.  I refer,  of course, to the local event's prized speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana, a fringe conservative who  has  been leading a poisonous  assault on Speaker John Boehner  & Co. through Jordan's House Freedom Caucus - one of those wacko far right outfits that lean more toward anarchy than to whatever might be left of Republican centrism.

Anyone attempting to digest dinner at Quaker Station won't hear any of the negatives that night because the way Chairman Alex Arshinkoff has put it in the  invitation, his guest is a national recognized conservative and "second to none watchdog of President Obama's failed...(fill in the many blanks) policies."

As has been evidenced many times in the past, The Boss can get absolutely hysterical when he starts damning the people he doesn't like.  But does Jordan represent the new norm for the county   party's more sober days under the late Ray Bliss, who never encouraged a raised voice against any other Republican?

On the other hand, Jordan has close ties with Rep. Steve King of Iowa,  who seldom lets a week go by without saying something stupid, and enjoys doing so from his outpost somewhere out in Iowa.

Jordan and King were among those  maddening congressmen who condemned Boehner for not  agreeing to shut down  the Homeland Security Department in the fracas over Obama's immigration policies.   Their scandalous motives have so enraged the Boehner side of  wealthy influential Republicans that the latter staged a $300,000 advertising campaign  accusing Jordan and a couple of his congressional buddies on national TV , including Fox News, of  placing America's "security at risk."

That peeved King, who described the ads as party "cannibalism," or as King went on to explain:

"It looks like cannibalism by leadership to me.   I mean when you go after your own people, what else would you call it?"

Well, I would say it's a lot like what the anti-Boehner crowd  in the party has been doing to the Speaker.    (Trust me: I do not speak as an ally of Boehner, either.)

So, isn't it fair to ask whether the Summit gang under Arshinkoff has stooped to a shameful new norm in a party that once was known for centrism and quiet reflection by Ray Bliss?

Keep that in mind, Republicans, when Alex lights the fuse after dinner to introduce Jordan with a flood of compliments.  When you stop to think about what the chairman won't tell you -  as I just did -  you'll know what I'm talking about. And it didn't cost me fifty bucks.

P.S. Jordan sent out a release thanking Benjamin Netanyahu for speaking to Congress as a man who wants  to secure Israel from its enemies.  Homeland Security for Americans?    Apparently he'll think about it.

Will shutdown cast pall over Summit GOP event?

Are you ready for the government shutdown that the experts are now conceding? No, still not necessary to start storing extra food and water in the basement.  But we are still facing a mess dumped on us by the weird collection of  anarchists on Capitol Hill who insist they only want to do what's best for the American people, imaginary or otherwise.

Easy for them to say.   While a sea of Americans will lose paychecks  and other government services, the laws are so devised that the Capitol Hill gang of Tea Party lawmakers will still get paid, even if their employes will not. To the topside goes the spoils.

And it took not John Boehner but another Ohioan to put the anarchists' self-styled  noble   work in context.    That would be Rep. Jim Jordan, from somewhere down in  central Ohio, a  hard right Republican (!) who believes it's all a matter of "basic civics" to do what has to be done for the people.

"Sometimes I go back to basic civics.  We're the House of Representatives.  We're the body that's supposed to be closer to the people," he said.  "That's why the founders gave a chance for the people to throw us out every two years."

From  his rural Republican-pure district?  He's kidding, of course.

He also s didn't mention that a majority of his colleagues in the People's House would disagree with his sophomoric  civics lesson.

Meantime, a shutdown might cast a pall over  the annual  Summit County GOP finance committee dinner Tuesday night at the Akron-Fairlawn Hilton.  For $300 a plate (or more) the guests will get to hear yet another boast from Gov. John (Ohio Miracle) Kasich.  A big honor for Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, I might add, inasmuch as he's paid $10,000 a month to be the University of Akron's guy to lobby...John Kasich. 

Once again at these annual moneyfests, Alex will get his chance to slam every  titled Democratic leader with scandalous behavior that would even force the late Ray Bliss to blush.  Whatever's going wrong, he will tell them, is the fault of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and such without once mentioning chief Republican/Tea Party anarchist Ted Cruz.

Long ago I chose the wrong line of work to make a good living.

P.S. I would provide you with an on-site report of the event as I did for many years when Bliss was chair. But a couple of years ago Alex  closed the doors to me, thus doing himself and me  a  favor.  

For the Summit GOP: Look who's coming to dinner

SUMMIT COUNTY REPUBLICAN Chief Alex Arshinkoff has never been known for moderation, whether in political hype or personal habit. He can now add to that dubious reputation his latest jewel for his crown: He will have as the main speaker for the party's annual finance dinner on October 19, which will be studded with dollar signs, the guy known as the most conservative congressman on Capitol Hill: Rep. Jim Jordan, who lives on a farm near Urbana, Oh.

Thus Arshinkoff, straining to become a national player, will push the once-moderate Republican County Party entirely over the cliff into the dark soul-less fringe that has taken over the GOP today.

Let me tell you about Jordan. He is a Tea Party evangelical whose rise to prominence, among others, was boosted by FreedomWorks, Dick Armey's right-wing cash machine. Jordan is now chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, and don't let that group's modest title mislead you into thinking it is a group of intellectuals sitting around and parsing Shakespearean verses. No way. He told the Plain Dealer last May that his job as the HRSC chairman will be to "help Republicans act like Republicans." - which, we all can see today, they aren't doing by the late Ray Bliss' standards.

In the same interview with the PD, Jordan, 47, listed as one of his hobbies "cutting weeds and firewood". And another: watching sports on television. He was, after all, a national wrestling champion. He tried the weed- cutting stuff with his sharp opposition to House Speaker John Boehner 's moves on possibly raising the debt ceiling, and angered the Republican forces around Boehner. Some peeved Ohio Republicans told the Columbus Dispatch that Jordan's behavior in the matter was "boneheaded." Fitting the profile, Jordan also is vibrantly against same-sex marriage and abortion.

Come to think of it: Why am I telling you all of this stuff? The people sitting at the $2.500 tables for 10 will hear it in the most glowing terms from Arshinkoff, who once wanted you to believe that he was a moderate Republican himself.

P.S. If the lights in your home dim briefly on the big night, it will tell you that Alex has just begun his rapturous introduction of his weed-cutting pal.

Boehner, Jordan: the hermit crabs are back in the shell

THE LEADING VILLAIN in John Boehner's failed attempt to resolve the debt ceiling issue is one of the House speaker's Ohio Tea Party colleagues - Rep. Jim Jordan , a former national wrestling champion. As such, Jordan has maintained a death hold on any Boehner compromise by means of Jordan's chairmanship of the outlandishly conservative House Republican Study Committee. The Tea Party-inspired gang operates much like Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety in its rule over France's perceived enemies.

Jordan, who lives with his family on a farm near Urbana, Oh., has done nothing but issue ultimatums to anyone less sacred than he in matters of his preference. From much of what he's said, he wants government to be run with family values. And maybe no government at all with all of the chickens running wild in the coop.

But wait. As the Republican congressman from Ohio's rural Fourth District that abuts Boehner's Eighth District, Jordan's no-holds-barred behavior has irritated some Ohio Republican lawmakers who will be playing a decisive role in congressional redistricting. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Jordan's "disloyalty" to Boehner has put Jordan in "jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district."

The paper quotes one of its sources as putting it this way:; '"Jim Jordan's boneheadedness has kind of informed everybody's thinking." In wrestling terms, it would mean taking Jordan to the matt. It's technically called the "guillotine," and described as a "pinning move" that is a "combination of leg riding and an open side hook."

I'm not sure what all of that means, but an expert informs me that if executed properly, Jordan would be on his way back to his farm.

From Jordan to Kyl, thanks for, um, a fresh viewpoint

BY MANAGING TO stay awake until the late hours for the climax of the epic budget battle, I learned some things that will make me a better-informed citizen.

Rep. Jim Jordan. the Ohio congressman from the Urbana area who is chairman of the right-wing Republican Study Committee, said he he will vote against the deal because it does not represent the reason that he was elected to Congress.

Jordan told reporters after the deal was announced:

"We don't want to shut down the government, we want to do what the American people sent us to do: achieve savings for taxpayers, and not have our tax dollars go to abortions."

There he goes again, even when we know that it is illegal under the Hyde Amendment to spend Federal tax dollars on abortions. But by conceding that, the family-values pro-life guys like Jordan will lose traction with their political base. Let the rcord show, in Jordan's words, that the November election was not about the economy and jobs, but about abortion. By the way, Jordan will be one of the honored guests at tonight's Summit County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner hosted by Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who has described Jordan as a "fast-rising conservative star." (Do you think that's really the identity that Alex has in mind for himself in the Kasich regime?)

We also learned a novel way to spin the truth from Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, who ranted that Planned Parenthood, now considered to be a subversive organization by the fringe, spends "90 pct. of its money on abortions."

Well, folks, it didn't take long for a lot of people to take that down. Actually, a very small percentage of the money goes to abortions. So it came time for Kyl's office to explain his numbers. I wish I were smart enough to construct its answer, but that isn't possible, so here it is from Kyl camp:

"His remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions."

That brand of semantics will add a whole new dimension to political double-speak.

2011 stats for 2012 election!

LATEST FIGURES from Public Policy Polling (PPP):

Sen. Sherrod Brown, 49 pct., Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, 30 pct. Undecided, 21 pct.

Brown, 49 pct., Secretary of State Jon Husted, 34 pct., Undecided, 21 pct.

Brown, 48 pct., Rep. Steve LaTourette, 30 pct., Undecided, 22 pct.

Brown, 48 pct., Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, 32 pct., Undecided, 21 pct.

Brown, 49 pct., Rep. Jim Jordan, 30 pct., Undecided 30 pct. , Undecided 21 pct.

Brown, 49 pct., Drew Carey, 34 pct., Undecided 17 pct.

I know, the 2012 election is still light years away. But haven't you heard? The campaigns are already under way. Ouch!