It’s Apparently Dawning On Mike Johnson That No
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This week, Johnson proposed a new funding plan for aid to Ukraine. The result was utterly predictable.
By Charles P. Pierce PUBLISHED: APR 05, 2024 12:26 PM EST
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...-backlash/
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Speaker Mike Johnson has a sad face these days. He’s beginning to realize that he’s in thrall to a pack of angry vandals in the service of an empty and unpopular shadow of an ideology. There’s no light. Hell, there’s no tunnel. There’s no escape for Speaker Moses, and God can’t help him because he can’t help himself. From Politico:
Five months after replacing the deposed Kevin McCarthy, the Louisiana Republican now finds himself acutely vulnerable to a right-wing revolt of his own after governing in conjunction with Democrats, pushing through twin bipartisan spending packages and making way for a Ukraine funding vote later this month.
He’s currently facing a lone-wolf removal campaign from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — one that could easily grow legs if he miscalculates, insiders warn. And even if he does navigate through a rocky stretch ahead, they believe he is ill-suited to lead House Republicans into the next Congress and beyond — particularly if the GOP loses control of the House in November.
“What’s he going to say? ‘Oh, shucks, guys … I ran everything through suspension and lost the majority, and I still want to be your leader’?” one Republican member said. “That’s not going to be tolerated.”
Why, my dear Speaker Moses, that simply is... not... done.
If your sympathy for the speaker is anywhere from limited to infinitesimal, you needn’t feel guilty. He knew what he was walking into, and he knew the folks with whom he’d be dealing, and it wasn’t the Democratic majority. This week, Johnson proposed a new funding plan for aid to Ukraine. The result was utterly predictable, if you know where the real power in the House resides.
That has seemingly done little to quell the internal backlash, with Greene — Johnson’s chief antagonist — undertaking a mini media tour in recent days to slam his proposals and attack Johnson personally. She told CNN the loan idea was a “heaping, steaming pile of bullshit” that is “insulting to the American people,” and reiterated that she would force a vote on Johnson’s removal should he move to pass Ukraine aid with Democratic support under suspension of the rules — as, we’re told, is Johnson’s current plan.
Greene went further in a Wednesday interview with Tucker Carlson: “This isn’t a Republican speaker we have right now; this is a Democrat speaker,” she said. “There is zero daylight between what Nancy Pelosi did … and what Mike Johnson is doing.”
Try to resist the temptation to observe that there is a lot of daylight between MTG’s ears.