The Democrats and the Speaker
Why Democrats are saving Mike Johnson now - and what they should demand next time.
The odd thing about the latest maneuverings in the House is…they all makes sense. Even the decision by the Democrats to save Speaker Mike Johnson for now. The big remaining question: What should the Democrats need to continue saving him?
Johnson’s job is sort of in limbo, with crackpot Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene threatening to force a vote on removing him because he allowed aid to Ukraine to pass.
Greene’s position is pretty easy to understand as long as one starts from the assumption that Republican radicals in the House are constantly searching for ways to differentiate themselves from mainstream conservatives, who are themselves so conservative on policy questions that there’s no real room remaining for the radicals to prove themselves as the only True Conservatives. What remains is procedural extremism. Having stuck with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, Greene’s play here is pretty obvious. The same for the handful of Republicans who are with her.
Assuming they aren’t actually interested in governing, there’s rarely been any serious penalty for Republicans who disrupt their own party by claiming to be more conservative.
As for the rest of the Republican conference, the sensible ones want to stick with Johnson because dumping Speakers every time something isn’t perfect is a lousy way to conduct business. The usually not-so-sensible Republicans? There’s something even worse having to put radicalism aside: The prospect of another multi-week nightmare of being stuck in Washington sitting through long, fractious meetings with their Republican colleagues. Members of Congress (understandably!) hate that - and it’s sufficient to explain why they don’t want to subject themselves to it again.
Besides, I’m fairly certain that even though a slim majority of Republicans voted against the bill sending help to Ukraine (and Israel, Taiwan, and others), a bunch of the “no” group were in the Vote No, Hope Yes club - that is, they wanted the bill to pass, but without their votes. For them and for those who strongly supported (and voted for) the bill, Johnson was doing exactly what party leaders are supposed to do: Protect members of the party, even if it means accepting a lot of abuse.1
That’s something that McCarthy never seemed to accept as a key part of the job. Which helps explain why he didn’t last.
(There’s a great Washington-is-weird story here. Johnson prefers that people believe he somehow didn’t realize that Ukraine would really be in enormous danger without additional aid and that only top-secret briefings changed his mind - a proposition that, if true, makes him out to be something of an idiot. Still, he’d rather have that then for folks to believe the far more likely story that his position changed to match his new responsibilities in acting on behalf of his conference. Of course, the latter also requires acknowledging that the majority of House Republicans actually wanted aid to pass, even though many of them voted the other way. So, moron it is!).2
That leaves the Democrats, who saved Johnson after letting former McCarthy be defeated last year.3 The situations seem similar; last October a handful of Republicans tried to oust McCarthy after he first agreed to a debt limit increase and then an extension to expiring spending bills, thus preventing a debt limit breach and then a governnment shutdown. This time, Johnson allowed a vote on Ukraine aid. In each of these cases, a House majority favored the bill - but enough Republicans opposed the measures that they would have failed without Democratic votes.
Some of the difference, according to reporting, was that Johnson simply proved more trustworthy than McCarthy.
The truth is, however, that these seemingly similar situations were actually quite different. The impasses that McCarthy eventually “solved” were phony ones that he and other Republicans created out of nothing. Republicans aren’t actually in favor of the US defaulting on its debt or the government shutting down; they were merely using those threats to blackmail Democrats into agreeing to policy concessions. And McCarthy was - at least until he wasn’t - fully on board with that strategy, which Democrats were correct to oppose.
Indeed, given that the (supposedly unpopular) debt limit vote is properly the responsibility of the majority party and that the spending bills were real compromises, Democrats were doing McCarthy a favor by supplying the votes.
On the other hand, quite a few Republicans appeared to sincerely oppose aiding Ukraine, while Democrats were eager to vote for it. Democrats may not have liked the policy implications of the long delay, but Johnson wasn’t manuevering them into casting tough votes, as McCarthy had. No wonder they were eager to dump McCarthy. And that they are now willing to live with Johnson.
So far. Congress still have a number of key deadlines between now and the election, the most notable of which is the end of the fiscal year, at which point temporary spending extensions will once again be needed to prevent a government shutdown only weeks before the election.
The normal procedure when Congress can’t finish it’s work is to simply pass short-term extensions - in this case, until they return for a lame-duck session after the election. Radical Republicans, however, may push for a government shutdown - and for other popular programs with upcoming deadlines to expire, causing chaos during the peak of the campaign, on the assumption that the Democratic president will suffer.
House Democrats are basically acting sensibly in bailing Johnson out in the aftermath of the Ukraine vote. But to keep saving him from the next round of radical Republican sniping, Democrats should insist on, well, business as usual. Either Congress gets things done on time, or Johnson allows votes on temporary extensions for spending bills, farm programs, the FAA, and anything else that’s needed.
If not? Well, there’s still plenty of time in this Congress for another Speaker.
Speaking of accepting pain as part of the job: Johnson reportedly met with Greene for two hours on Monday, with another meeting expected Tuesday.
For a thorough examination of Johnson’s positioning on Ukraine, see the always-essential Sarah Binder over at Good Authority.
A quick reminder of the procedural situation. Any member of the House can push for a vote to remove the Speaker - to “vacate the chair.” Such an effort can be defeated with a procedural vote, or it can produce a final vote to keep or reject the Speaker, with the majority party normally voting to keep the Speaker in place. Since the Republicans have a tiny House majority (as of today, it’s a 217-213 margin), if all Democrats vote against the Repulican Speaker then a tiny group of Republican defectors could doom Johnson.