Why is Frank shooting against Jackie in the election debate?

In House of Cards, S03E11, Frank attacks Jackie (that her step-children go to private school). This seems to be without any logical reason.

Jackie has proven herself to be loyal as she was attacking Dunbar on all levels in the debate. Also, she seems to be the only one standing behind Frank in the whole campaign. He must have known that he will lose her and her votes to Dunbar if he attacked her.

Why have he done it anyway?

plot-explanation house-of-cards

Best Answer

Jackie has proven herself to be loyal

Jackie had hardly proven herself loyal.

Throughout the whole season it seemed she was on the fence, for example:

She sides with the party when they initially withdraw support from Frank's presidential bid
She also leaked hints that the party had withdrawn support from Frank
She agreed with Dunbar to suspend campaigning due to the hurricane against Franks wishes
She was initially hesitant to attack Dunbar's kids and Frank had to talk her into it
Jackie explicitly tried to side with Dunbar but Dunbar turned her down, it's unclear if that got back to Frank

A reoccurring theme is that Frank has shown to be highly vengeful and is rarely loyal to those who haven't been unconditionally loyal to him in the past. He threw her under the bus for all the times that she was on the fence, went behind his back, or made him work for her loyalty.

He claimed to Jackie that it was so it wouldn't appear as though they were teaming up on Dunbar, but his explanation was thinly veiled and Frank most likely expected her to see through it and side with Dunbar.

We'll have to wait until Season 4 to see if that works out for Frank, or if his revenge was ill-timed.