Dem
51
GOP
49
Congress will be in session again next Tuesday, after 2 weeks off. Why not Monday? We don't know. Maybe the members want to watch the eclipse, or maybe they are going to be celebrating National Library Week by banning some books. In any event, once the gang is all back together again, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will be in a tough spot, and he might very well not make it out on the other side with his current title intact.
What he faces, in effect, are four problems. The most immediate, most likely, is the effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to vacate the chair. As multiple politics-watchers have noted, Johnson's best play would probably have been to bring the motion to the floor before the recess. That would have been bold, and would have come at a time when Greene had not yet been able to round up additional votes. But Johnson did not do that, and so he not only lost a chance to make a bold move, he also gave Greene time to rally the anti-Johnson opposition. And if, at any point, she thinks she's got the votes, she's going to convert the motion to a privileged motion, which will force Johnson to bring it to the floor within 48 hours.
While the motion to vacate looms over Johnson's head, he's got a second headache courtesy of his fellow Republicans. There are some very tricky questions that will soon come before the House, including funding for Israel, funding for Ukraine, and a renewal (or not) of some key surveillance laws. No matter how he threads the needle on these issues, he's going to alienate some members of the House Republican Conference (and that's before considering that any bill, if it is going to become law, has to get through the Senate and has to get the signature of a Democratic president).
For example, Johnson understands full well that money for Ukraine is very much in the interest of the United States, and will be far cheaper than the alternative if Ukraine is allowed to fall. Some members of his conference understand this, too. House and Senate Democrats know it, and Joe Biden also knows it. However, other members of the GOP conference strongly disagree, either because they are budget hawks who fail to understand that $1 spent today might produce $10 in savings tomorrow, or they are Trump sycophants who have adopted his pro-Russia/isolationist line. Given the difficulty in herding the GOP cats, Johnson has undertaken what The Bulwark's Will Saletan calls a "pathetic apology tour," laying out the difficulties the (ultra-slim) majority faces, and begging Republican members to be reasonable. Some of them won't be, of course.
And that brings us to the third problem. There are some matters on which Johnson might make up for tepid Republican support by reaching across the aisle for Democratic votes. However, the Democrats are going to want concessions in exchange for their support, probably pretty big ones. The more Democratic-friendly a bill becomes, the more Republicans will jump ship. And even if Johnson pieces together a viable Republican-Democrat coalition, that isn't seen as "governance" by a big chunk of the modern Republican Party. It's seen as "selling out," "surrendering" and "being a cuck." There are some Republicans who are not unfriendly to Johnson, but who say that reaching across the aisle would effectively leave him as a man without a party.
And then, the fourth problem, which is that Johnson apparently dislikes the job. He's exhausted, tired of all the travel, tired of the infighting, and tired of being attacked by members of his own team. So, it may not take much for him to decide to chuck the whole thing, even if he's not removed by Greene & Co. In fact, reading between the lines, if Johnson stays on the job, it will likely be only for the good of the team, to stop the Republicans from having to hold yet another embarrassing series of speaker elections mid-term.
Johnson's demise is not yet a done deal, and it's possible he weathers the storm. If so, he's likely to continue to rely on suspension of normal order, which means that members of the Republican Conference can't block or slow down bills with silly stunts, but that a two-thirds vote is needed for approval of anything. Meanwhile, the question of why anyone would want to be speaker with a Republican majority continues to be a difficult one to answer. Should Johnson head for the hills, he'll be, what, the fourth Republican speaker in a row to run away screaming? (Z)