There’s No Way The GOP Will Ring In 2025 With A Dysfunctional Fight Over Speaker... Is There?

Trump And Musk Are Threatening Primaries Against Anyone Who Acts Up

Trump told the House he wants puppet MAGA Mike back as speaker. That frightened off some puffed up MAGAts who had been growling and grimacing— like Josh Brecheen (R-OK) and Troy Nehls (R-TX)— but there may be enough who aren’t afraid of Trump to get the year going to a Republican p.r. catastrophe. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is still a hard NO. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) is still a walking freak show that doesn’t know what she wants but says she’s not ready to vote for MAGA Mike. (She just released a list of demands in return for her vote.) Eric Burlison (R-MO) is another one who could actually vote NO on the first ballot. And it isn’t just them, at least not on Friday. The Freedom Caucus doofuses are now more likely to vote against MAGA Mike because this new rules package impinges on their ability to vacate the chair, requiring 9 co-sponsors instead of just one lone whack job. That's likely to be a face-saving negotiated settlement if Johnson fails to win a first round ballot.

Chip Roy (R-TX), who’s already in Trump’s crosshairs but who wants to be the 119th’s Matt Gaetz, went on Fox Business yesterday to make threatening noises about the speaker election. “I remain undecided,” he said, “as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president’s agenda… Right now, I don’t believe he has the votes on Friday. People say, well, Chip, who would you choose otherwise? Mike’s a friend and maybe he can answer the call and deliver an agenda and a plan. Byron Donalds is a good man and a good friend. I nominated him two years ago. Jim Jordan’s a good man and a good friend. There are other members of leadership in the conference who could do the job.”

Newt Gingrich, a spectacularly failed speak from the last century castigated Massie on Twitter for not toeing the line. “I do not understand what the CONTRARIAN house Republicans think they will gain by opposing Speaker Mike Johnson. They have no one who can get more votes. They risk crippling President Trump’s electoral win on January 6. They are in effect allies of the Democrats. I challenge them to explain what their end game is other than noise.”

And Massie replied, predicting that if MAGA Mike is reelected speaker the Republicans will lose their slim majority in the 2026 midterms:

Massie ended his diatribe by noting that “[T]he emperor has no clothes and the entire conference knows it but few will say it. The general public knows it too. Please don’t shoot the messengers.”

Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who once loudly vowed that he would always be the most right wing and most intractable Republican in the House, is leaving this week, almost definitely going off to work for his masters in the crypto-cartel. But, a changed man (still in the closet but no more murders), he had some advice for the rebels to his right:

What we’ve formulated is a strong speakership on behalf of the House. So the opening day of Congress, we give a majority of the power of the institution to the speaker. That’s the reason why it’s such a difficult damn vote, because you give the speaker so much power. And so we’re in this situation where we have a whole group of people that want to diminish the powers of the speaker and think that it’s going to lead to more conservative outcomes, and I think that’s absurd. I think it’s dumb. I think it’s wrong-headed and historically inaccurate.

Diminishing the role of the speaker, the motion to vacate— that has been fully weaponized. It’s been fully weaponized by people that are quite selfish in their views, that are not institutionalists and don’t actually get more conservative policy as a result of it. And history will show that.

That year was success after success after success for McCarthy, stuff that was rabbit-out-of-the-hat stuff. He’s dead man walking, and he’s like Houdini. Kevin’s a friend, and as a friend, I know his greatest attributes and his worst attributes.

You gotta believe in magic sometime. To watch him get through this whole year and to be punished for doing something that was the next rabbit out of the hat, which is government funding, it’s a CR [continuing resolution], for heaven’s sake, a clean CR.

So he’s punished for that. I think this is the dumbest thing I’ve seen. And then I think, “Wait a second, the institution’s trapped.” And there’s also this feeling that I’m signed up for Hotel California, right? You can check out, but you can never leave. And that also dawned on me when I’m on the dias.

Andy Harris (R-MD), chair of the Freedom Caucus, and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), a former chair of the caucus, are both claiming to be undecided. Same with Tennessee sociopath Tim Buchett. I don’t see Harris standing up to Trump for more than one vote. People who can MM can only afford to lose one vote are probably wrong since neither Elise Stefanik (R-NY) nor Mike Waltz (R-FL) has resigned yet and both are sure to vote. SO that makes it 219-215. The other thing in MM’s favor is that there is no candidate who can possibly get a majority. Gym Jordan (R-OH) and former Brooklyn pot seller and bankrobber Byron Donalds’ names have been floated but neither has any chance.