May08

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Greene Party on Hold

Welcome to America's most boring soap opera. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) really does not want to back off of her threat to try to deprive Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) of his gavel. After all, she feeds off of stupid stunts like this, in the way a vampire feeds off of blood. However, she's under a lot of pressure from her Republican colleagues, even many of the nutty ones, not to do it. Plus, if she does pull the trigger, she's going to fail, and end up with egg all over her face.

Johnson, who continues to display far, far more political acumen than his predecessor, met with Greene to discuss the situation yesterday. At that meeting, she laid out a list of demands:

• Only allow a bill to be voted on if a majority of Republicans support it.
• No more Ukraine funding.
• Completely defund the Justice Department prosecutions against Trump.
• Shut down the government or impose an automatic 1 percent cut across the board if all twelve appropriations bills are not passed on time.

These are, on the whole, kinda dumb. Ukraine already has its money, which will last until after the election. Defunding small slices of one executive department is a near impossibility. Johnson already doesn't bring bills to the floor unless they are supported by at least half his caucus. And Marge Greene is most certainly not going to be the one to break Congress of its habit of passing the budget late every damn year.

Nonetheless, Johnson's listening to Greene and hearing her demands allowed her to save face, and to declare that she got something valuable out of her threat to vacate the chair. She said yesterday that she's putting it on the back burner for now. A smart politician would know to let the matter drop. We'll see if one of them tells Greene that. (Z)