Is Mike Johnson's Speakership in Danger?

Henry Rodgers at the Daily Caller suggests it might be.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is facing serious blowback from those in his own party for trying to push through a continuing resolution filled with unnecessary spending. Sources on Capitol Hill, including both lawmakers and their staff, told the Caller Johnson may have cost himself the Speaker's job with the poorly-received gambit right before Christmas.

"Mike Johnson spent a lot of time fundraising off of selfies with President Trump, and then betrayed him right before the inauguration. He'll have to answer for that in January," a senior House Republican staffer told the Caller.

The 1,574-page spending measure will receive votes from both Democrats and Republicans, but Johnson broke several promises in the process of putting forth the bill. Johnson said in September that he has "no intention of going back" to the "terrible tradition" of a Christmas omnibus.

A senior house aide told the Caller that House Republicans have lost trust in Johnson and that it will be hard to recover from.

"It's not a competence or leadership question for some folks now. It's a trust question. That's gonna be tough to come back from," the senior house aide said.

...

Johnson also promised that the spending bill would be written by committee leaders in an open process and members would have at least 72 hours to read it before voting, but in reality, the new CR was negotiated behind closed doors by leadership.

"On every important issue this majority has faced, the Speaker has shown himself to be inapt and outsmarted by Biden and Schumer and is too easily willing to surrender," one House Republican lawmaker told the Caller.

...

Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie was the first House Republican to say he would oppose Johnson's bid for Speaker, saying Wednesday: "I'll vote for somebody else." When asked who he would vote for instead he said: "I've got a few in mind. I'm not going to say yet."

"There's a cognitive disconnect among my colleagues who hated Speaker Johnson's CR, but still plan to vote for Speaker Johnson in 2 weeks. That 1557 page bill was a product of the swamp that uniparty Johnson was happy to facilitate. He couldn't understand why we didn't lap it up," Massie tweeted Thursday morning.

Ed Morrissey reports that Johnson has Trump's support.

IF.

Trump says that Johnson can "easily remain Speaker" "IF" he starts acting like a man and not the cringing weakling boy he seems to be.

If's a big word.

From Fox Digital:

President-elect Donald Trump told Fox News Digital that House Speaker Mike Johnson will "easily remain speaker" for the next Congress if he "acts decisively and tough" and eliminates "all of the traps being set by Democrats" in the spending package.

Fox News Digital spoke exclusively with the president-elect Thursday morning, just hours after the bipartisan deal to avoid a partial government shutdown was killed.

"Anybody that supports a bill that doesn't take care of the Democrat quicksand known as the debt ceiling should be primaried and disposed of as quickly as possible," Trump told Fox News Digital.

The liberal sellouts of the Republican Party are muttering in anger to themselves. Only their Democrat allies have the guts to complain on-the-record:

The Democrats are cursing the Republican base -- but you know that the Republican Quislings are even angrier.

The corporate cowards and Regime servants we call the GOPe need to understand and internalize the New Rules:

Yes, we all know that you can make your easy lives even easier by ducking every necessary fight and just giving in to Democrats on every tough vote.

But we didn't elect you so you can make your own lives easier.

We elected you to make our lives easier, and this requires that you make your lives harder much of the time.

If you're not up to this, we will vote you out of office. You are not important New Solomons we look to for wisdom. We are telling you our wisdom, and we expect you to implement that wisdom into positive policy.

We don't want your "wisdom," we don't want your "guidance." You are idiots. We only want you to take direction.

We don't want your "instincts," we don't want your "experience." Your instincts and experience are garbage. Your instincts and experience is why the Republic is on the edge of collapse and civil war.

You are not Ciceros. You are merely numbers. You are the stupid useless nobodies that were bland enough that we could put into office to implement our preferences.

If you're not willing to humble yourself and just be numbers for us, we will replace you with wiser people who will.

posted by Ace at 04:30 PM

| Access Comments