Speaker Johnson with Ukraine aid is doing the same sort of thing as Judge Cannon with Trump’s classified docs trial, creating delay after delay in service to an anti-American cause, but with just barely enough resemblance to normal procedure to thwart cut-the-BS-already counters. https://t.co/zHBV0EYoBZ — Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) April 5, 2024 It is a fact …
Repub Venality Open Thread: Mike Johnson’s Malignant IncompentencePost + Comments (68)
4. A shutdown would hurt Republicans politically.
Some interviewers asked Johnson why Republicans shouldn’t shut down the government. He explained that shutdowns have always hurt the GOP because people suffer and get angry when federal paychecks stop, flights get canceled, and other functions—agents patrolling the border, for example—are halted or curtailed. He pointed out that polls show Republicans would again take the blame. But this is a hard message to sell to right-wing audiences because they live in their own mediasphere. They don’t understand how different they are from the broader population…10. The kingdom of heaven is coming.
Through the centuries, religious leaders have encouraged believers by promising joy in the afterlife. Johnson is telling right-wing audiences that they, too, must be patient, because all the woes of this broken world will be healed in the 2024 election. “I’m trying to be an ambassador of hope on Easter Sunday,” the speaker told Gowdy…TWO MOMENTS FROM THE APOLOGY TOUR are particularly disconcerting. One happened on Newsmax, when Bolling asked Johnson to address a rumor. “I’ve had two congressmen . . . call me, saying there’s someone on the Democrat side that’s paying off some of these [Republican] members to leave, to leave you with less of a majority,” said Bolling. Johnson said he didn’t think the rumor was true. But the circulation of this conspiracy theory among Republican lawmakers—and the fact that Bolling took it seriously, or at least thought his audience would—shows the extent of the party’s illness. Instead of facing the real problem—Republican lawmakers hate their jobs so much that they’re abandoning Johnson and the conference—the Republican base is sinking deeper into paranoia.
The other exchange took place in Johnson’s interview with Kirk. The speaker worried that a shutdown would go on for a long time because lawmakers who think they way he does would refuse to end it. “I come from the conservative movement myself. I’m a hardliner myself,” Johnson told Kirk. “A bunch of my friends would never join in the vote to reopen the government.”
That’s how derelict and dangerous the House GOP has become. The speaker is afraid to leave the fate of the nation to people like himself.
Mike Johnson again cancels voting on the US aid to Ukraine.
The date has been postponed again for several more weeks. Speaker Mike Johnson is coming up with new excuses, saying that he is trying to 'soften opposition' from radical Republicans.
1/n pic.twitter.com/9bxPsaLVsN
— Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇦 (@rshereme) April 4, 2024
2/ If put to a vote, the bill is expected to pass with a large majority in favor, just like in the Senate. But Johnson, who has accepted russian campaign money in the past, refuses to put the aid bill to a vote.
3/ This delay for over 6 months has already cost Ukraine thousands of Ukrainian lives. I am truly ashamed for these representative of the Republican Party. And I am even more ashamed for some Ukrainian Americans who will actually be voting for these pro-russian advocates.
4/ The US is showing itself to be an unreliable partner on the world stage.
House Speaker Mike Johnson can probably out-manuever MTG and keep his gavel until November. But his survival as Speaker after Election Day 2024 depends on which party controls Congress and the White House. https://t.co/4XCCkuhSqP
— Intelligencer (@intelligencer) April 5, 2024
All we sane people can do is work for change come November. Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — “Don’t Get Too Attached to Speaker Mike Johnson”:
Like his defenestrated predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, House Speaker Mike Johnson is caught in a perpetual squeeze between what’s necessary to keep the country operating and what the wackier members of his conference want. And as Politico reports, it’s a real buzzkill:
To hear Mike Johnson tell it, he’s not having much fun as speaker. He has complained about the long hours and constant travel, according to those who have recently spoken to him, and a series of escalating internal clashes have made the job a joyless slog.
… The bigger question is Johnson’s longer-term survival as the top House Republican. But he might as well un-furrow his brow, because the decision may be beyond his control. Odds are high that the November election will greatly affect Johnson’s status. One such scenario is by definition curtains for Speaker Johnson, and likely for Leader Johnson, as Playbook suggests:
Many Republicans privately concede that they’re unlikely to keep the House this fall. And if they don’t, there will be pressure on Johnson to step aside from leadership completely, as has happened to GOP speakers who have lost the majority since the 1950s.
[One Republican asked:] “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’? That’s not going to be tolerated.”Johnson would then be free to return to the back-bench obscurity from whence he emerged…
The most complicated post-November situation for Mike Johnson is probably the least likely: the status quo ante. It’s unclear what exactly the failure to flip the Senate and the White House would do to the psychology of the Republican Party. But at the very least, Speaker Johnson would more than ever remain the extremely unlikely top Republican in Washington, and quite possibly a sitting duck for those demanding a change in party leadership.
His life may seem difficult right now, but it could be a lot worse. In any event, voters hold Mike Johnson’s future in their hands.