A former Republican congressman who served alongside Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is asking whether the Trump loyalist is the right person to lead House Republicans out of their midterm wreckage.
“Some people will not like this post. I completely understand that,” former Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH) wrote in a lengthy post on X. “But I’m speaking from personal experience, and I believe these are questions Republicans need to confront.”
Renacci, who served in the House from 2011 to 2019, said he got to know Jordan as “a firebrand” who “rarely, if ever, compromised his principles.” Jordan opposed raising the debt ceiling and expanding government spending, and was “willing to challenge his own party’s leadership,” Renacci wrote.
He recalled one conversation in particular. Renacci, a racing enthusiast, asked Jordan what he’d do if he were driving Renacci’s race car and was guaranteed to finish second, or could push harder for “a 10% chance of winning and a 90% chance of blowing the engine, finishing last, and costing me millions of dollars.”
“Jim smiled and said, ‘I’d blow up the engine,’” Renacci wrote. “That was the Jim Jordan I knew.”
“But something changed,” he continued.
Jordan “was not originally one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters,” Renacci wrote, but became “one of his most loyal defenders.” He argued that the loyalty “has increasingly influenced his approach to governing.”
“The man who once fought relentlessly against spending, debt, and government expansion has become far more willing to defend policies coming from a Republican White House,” Renacci wrote. He pointed to Jordan’s defense of Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war.
“I believe the Jim Jordan I first met in Congress would have challenged some of those decisions, regardless of which party controlled the White House,” he wrote. “Today, I see a different Jim Jordan.”
Renacci said those same policies contributed to Republicans’ “devastating losses” on Tuesday. Yet “instead of asking whether our policies and messaging need to change, some seem determined to continue defending the very agenda that contributed to those losses.”
“And now Jim Jordan is running to become the next leader of House Republicans,” he wrote.
Renacci said Jordan is “articulate, aggressive, hardworking, and an effective political fighter.”
“But the question isn’t whether Jim Jordan can fight,” he wrote. “The question is whether he can lead Republicans in a new direction.”
“Should the people who defended the policies voters just rejected be the same people entrusted with rebuilding the Republican Party?” he asked.
“Can Jim Jordan — or anyone else who spent years defending the agenda voters rejected on Tuesday — really be the light that leads the Republican Party out of the darkness?” Renacci concluded. “That’s not a statement. It’s a question. And it’s one Republicans need to answer before choosing their next leaders.”
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