Marjorie Traitor Greene: "Don't Blame Me"
On his way out the door Friday, Ken Buck (R-CO), former head of the Colorado Republican Party, told Olivia Beavers that “he was leaving due to the House’s dysfunctional and toxic environment, describing it as the worst he’s seen over the course of his five terms in office. He’s not the only House Republican to describe it that way, and since he announced he was quitting early, so did Wisconsin [ex-] rising star Mike Gallagher.
Virtually everyone I speak to on Capitol Hill tells me the House is the most dysfunctional it has been since they’ve been a member. Many of them don’t like it, not one bit. They’ve been blaming it on the House’s very own Dennis the Menace, Matt Gaetz. And now they have another much-detested member to blame as well, Marjorie Traitor Greene. She went on some neo-fascist cable channel Tuesday to whine that it won’t be her fault if Hakeem Jeffries become speaker before the end of the term— which would certainly be an historic turn of events no matter who gets the blame/credit.
Generally considered one of the House’s dimmest bulbs, she babbled that “It’s just a simple math. The more Republicans, like Mike Gallagher, that resign and leave early— guess what, that means we have less Republicans in the House. So, every time a Mike Gallagher or a Ken Buck leaves early, that brings our numbers down and brings us dangerously closer to being in the minority. It’s not Marjorie Taylor Greene that is saying the inconvenient truth and forcing everyone to wake up and realize Republican voters are done with us doing this kind of crap that we did last week [keeping the government from shutting down]. I am not going to be responsible for Hakeem Jeffries being Speaker of the House. I am not going to be responsible for a Democratic majority taking over our Republican majority that lies squarely rarely on the shoulders of these Republicans that are leaving early because they don’t have the intestinal fortitude to handle the real fight and the responsibility that comes with leadership and the end of our republic when our country is nearly destroyed.”
Both members who have left, members who have thought about leaving, members who will be leaving in January and members who plan to tough it out, say Traitor Greene’s presence in the House is galling and nearly unbearable. A chief of staff for a senior Republican told me this morning that “everyone thinks she’s like a skunk at a picnic; no one wants anything to do with her. There are some people who think she’s worse than Gaetz, although that’s a minority position... I’ve been here for nearly two decades. There’s never been anyone like her here. Everyone is hoping Trump will win and give her a job in his administration.”
Yesterday, Marianna Sotormayor reported House Republicans felt things were getting almost back to normal again when Traitor Greene ripped open the wounds of the past five months with her motion to vacate the chair [something she would never have done without Trump’s direction]. “Though Greene’s resolution was meant to serve more as a ‘warning’ than a signal that a vote is imminent, it has forced Republicans to grapple with the possibility that they could again be without a speaker if critical legislation is not handled in a manner the far right approves. Even worse, to some lawmakers, they may be forced into closer coordination with Democrats. The persistent demands of the furthest-right flank, who often refuse to strike deals with a wing of the conference they consider unwilling to fight for the most conservative goals, put Johnson in a tenuous position while trying to piece together a policy puzzle that can pass a Democratic-led Senate and land on the president’s desk. Several far-right members have publicly hinted they would support ousting Johnson if he bungles this next fight.”
Republicans thought threats to oust the speaker had largely subsided after many realized they weren’t likely to unanimously elect a third conservative speaker. It took three weeks to elect Johnson, in part because three previous speaker-designates couldn’t clinch the necessary 218 votes on the House floor. Complicating the math further, Republicans will soon have a one-vote margin to pass anything relying only on their majority once Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) steps down next month. And there are whispers among lawmakers that more are looking for the exits, possibly jeopardizing the majority.
That historically narrow margin and their track-record of disagreements will make it nearly impossible for Republicans to agree on a candidate within their ranks and could force them to rely on Democrats— a notion the far right despises— to choose a moderate Republican as speaker— or even Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) if conservatives are not careful.
For now, Republicans from across the ideological factions left Washington largely characterizing Greene’s effort as a selfish one they would not back. Rep. John Duarte (R-CA), a [traditional conservative] who represents a swing district, suggested the conference “make a bracket of Marjorie’s March Madness to guess who the next speaker is going to be,” while House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-VA) said he suspected she filed the motion “to get people to talk about her.” Greene said she did “not wish to inflict pain on our conference and to throw the House in chaos” but she thought it was time to “find a new speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans.”
Still, many recognize that if the question of whether to remove Johnson is ultimately posed, there are enough hard-liners upset at the speaker’s leadership over the past five months who would consider ousting him.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, is open to removing Johnson, but only if Republicans agree before voting that they can unanimously elect his conservative replacement.
“I want the best leader we can have. I’m open to that. And if the best leader we can have is Mike Johnson— the best leader is not Hakeem Jeffries,” he said.
…Republicans distrust of each other was on vivid display Friday as a member supportive of leadership’s agreement with Democrats on spending would cast a vote in favor of the bill, only to be countered almost immediately by a vote from a Republican against it, causing anxiety over whether the vote would pass. It did, but not without a cost. Less than half of the conference voted with GOP leadership to fund the government.
For over an hour Friday morning before the vote, a dozen members of the Freedom Caucus lambasted their “wasted” opportunity to use the levers of the majority to ensure conservative policy wins, repeatedly describing Johnson as “weak.” Good and several others pledged to spend the rest of the year making “it as uncomfortable and as painful as possible” for Republicans who voted in support of the measure in an effort “to expose them to their constituents back home.”
Asked later whether triggering a motion to vacate would push the speakership into the arms of Democrats, Greene told reporters, “[Johnson’s] already in the arms of Democrats.”
For months, [traditional] Republicans fearful of another motion to vacate have been engaging their Democratic counterparts to ask them a simple question: What would you need to keep a GOP speaker in the role?
The short answer is funding for Ukraine.
Democrats didn’t help save McCarthy because a majority of them didn’t trust him and were irate that he continued to blame them for House dysfunction rather than ask them for help. If Johnson needs Democrats help to keep his position, it also would come with a price. A contingent of moderate, vulnerable and governing-minded Democrats would vote to table a motion to vacate if Johnson puts a bill funding Ukraine on the House floor, effectively killing the threat.
“If they call forward that motion to vacate vote because he has brought Ukraine funding, I will whip votes to table that,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), a [conservative] Democrat. “Let’s be responsible grown ups and protect democracy and not give Vladimir Putin a win.”
House Democrats have been calling on Johnson to put the bipartisan Senate funding plan on the floor for a vote, threatening to move unilaterally if they can amass a majority of votes. Leadership has heard from members that there is very little appetite to remove Johnson if he does the right thing on Ukraine, according to senior Democratic aides, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. But what that looks like depends on the circumstances
…[T]o try to launch a new effort crafting bills that garners support from all but one Republican seems like an impossible task given the deep divisions that exist on border security and Ukraine. Democrats and many GOP defense hawks growing anxious to aid Ukraine say there is only enough time to consider the Senate-approved bill, which includes funding to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian aid for Gaza, but no border security after congressional Republicans overwhelmingly rejected a bipartisan compromise.
Yet if Johnson doesn’t consider the demands from the growing isolationist wing of his conference, he could be out of his job.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, admitted Johnson was “in a difficult spot” Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, acknowledging that ousting him “could actually throw the balance of power to Hakeem Jeffries.”
“We don’t need dysfunction right now,” he said. "With the world on fire the way it is, we need to govern.”
I don’t see the Republicans allowing that to happen unless another of their members quits. David Nir warned the Democratic leadership to be prepared if GOP disarray culminates “in a dramatic climax never before seen in American history: control of the chamber changing hands before an election. And if it happens, Democrats need to be ready, because they could seize a once-in-a-lifetime chance to pass popular, vital legislation that Speaker Mike Johnson has blocked.”
If there’re suddenly more Democrats in the House than Republicans— say another goofball quits (and several are thinking about doing so) or say Harold Rogers (KY-85) and John Carter (TX-81) catch colds and die— the Dems would have to offer a vacate the chair motion, pass it on a party-line vote and immediately “adopt a package of rules changes to alter ratios on committees. That's because the House speaker faces a critical limitation on any bills he brings directly to the floor: They must be passed by a two-thirds majority. Enraged Republicans would have no reason to provide the necessary margins. Bills that emerge from committees, however, don't face that restriction. Right now, though, Republicans have a majority on all relevant committees, so Democrats would need to take charge of those committees to eliminate a key bottleneck.”
Jeffries and Schumer should be working on a reconciliation bill right now— a way to avoid an otherwise certain filibuster— one that both Manchin and Sinema (or, if not her, Murkowski) would agree to. Norm Ornstein suggested to Nir that it include “a permanent fix to the debt ceiling so that Republicans can no longer use the threat of defaulting on our loan obligations to hold the government hostage. Another popular inclusion would be making permanent the expanded child tax credit that dramatically reduced child poverty during the pandemic but expired thanks to opposition from Manchin and Republicans. Democrats would also be wise to fund the government through next year, because the recent spending deal that Congress agreed to expires at the end of September— just before Election Day. A prolonged shutdown would make it harder for the federal government to monitor the election, something that many in the GOP would be only too happy to see.”
“House Democrats,” wrote Nir, “could also advance other bills that have already been approved by the Senate but have been stymied by Johnson, most notably funding for Ukraine and the bipartisan border deal. Ornstein suggested that these measures could be passed on their own, or they could be wrapped into the reconciliation package as an incentive to secure broader support… he opportunity to achieve all of this may not arise this year. But if it does, Democrats could not only pass critical legislation, they could also demonstrate to the public exactly what it's like when grownups are in charge. They'd be helping Americans across the country—and helping themselves at the ballot box at the same time. And it would all be thanks to Republican disarray.”
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