As House Republicans return to work following their holiday break, there’s renewed chatter about Speaker Mike Johnson and whether the Louisianan will face a revolt from his right-wing flank. The intra-party drama hasn’t yet reached the stage that led former Rep. Kevin McCarthy to lose his gavel, but members are increasingly aware of the conversations.
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York told Semafor, “If they try it, they are f—ing idiots.”
The assessment might very well be true, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that we’ll see an effort to oust Johnson anyway. Fox News reported overnight:
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, made his bluntest threat yet against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warning that a motion to vacate the House Republican leader is “not off the table.” “I’m leaving it on the table. I’m not gonna say I’m gonna go file it tomorrow. I’m not saying I’m not going to file it tomorrow,” the Texas conservative said on “The Steve Deace Show” Tuesday. “I think the speaker needs to know that we’re angry about it.”
And what, pray tell, did the Texas Republican mean when he referred to “it”? There are, as it turns out, a variety of factors that brought us to this point.
About a month ago, for example, Johnson endorsed a bipartisan deal on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which omitted a variety of radical priorities. The speaker’s far-right members were furious and raised the specter of consequences for their party’s leadership team. The New York Times went so far as to say Johnson was facing a “political crisis“ of sorts in light of the criticisms he was facing from his own members.
The week before that, the House speaker faced fierce criticisms from members of his conference over his handling of former Rep. George Santos’ fate. That came on the heels of similar GOP pushback in November after Johnson backed a temporary spending measure that prevented a government shutdown.
But this week, partisan temperatures reached new heights after the House speaker reached an agreement with Senate Democratic leaders on spending levels that his more extremist members really don’t like, sparking another round of chatter about whether Johnson might eventually face a McCarthy-like vote over his future.
Punchbowl News spoke this week to a “well-plugged-in House Republican,” who is not a Freedom Caucus member, who said a growing number of GOP members have “significant concerns” about the speaker’s ability to deliver. The unnamed Republican lawmaker added that there’s a “growing feeling that he’s in way, way over his head.”
The report added that while it’s too early to say that Johnson’s days are numbered, “there are knives out for the speaker already.”
I don’t want to overstate matters. The House speaker is facing challenges, but a vote on his possible ouster is not imminent, and it might not happen at all.
That said, Republican frustration with Johnson is real, and it’s getting worse, not better.
What’s more, let’s also not forget that the rules that were in place last fall, when McCarthy lost his gavel, remain unchanged. It would, in other words, take just one member to force a vote on the speaker’s fate — what’s known as a motion to vacate the chair — and given the incredibly narrow margins in the chamber, if even a few House Republicans voted to oust Johnson, the party would once again find itself without a speaker.
Watch this space.
