Go Ahead and Pull The Trigger, Marjorie
If you shoot at the Speaker of the House, you better not miss.
There’s an old saying that if you shoot at a king, you’d better not miss. The same is true, it turns out, if you’re gunning for the speaker of the house.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was mad at House Speaker Mike Johnson before. But now, after today’s foreign aid vote which includes 60 billion dollars for Ukraine, she’s furious, claiming that Johnson is a “traitor to our country.”
If Greene is ever going to bring her motion to vacate the chair to a vote, now is the time. But she probably won’t because, if she does, she’ll be rendered irrelevant when it comes to House politics, along with the rest of her trouble-making friends. Of course, if she doesn’t everyone will know she’s bluffing which won’t do much for her influence either.
If Greene crosses the Rubicon and tries to have Johnson removed over bringing Ukraine aid to the floor, Democrats have hinted that they’ll back him up. Ironically, Johnson could end up with the biggest mandate in congressional history and retain the speakership by something like 426-4.
But even if Democrats lend him just enough votes to win, the handful of tantrum-throwing radicals that have been running the house Republican caucus and, therefore, the house, will suddenly find themselves ignored and irrelevant. Johnson will have no further incentive to appease Greene and her friends and every incentive to act reasonably and cooperate with house Democrats.
Johnson will still be a very conservative Republican so bi-partisan “cooperation” will be relative. It probably will not arise to the level of a formal power-sharing deal. The new partisan detente probably won’t even be formally recognized. Nonetheless, there will be a lot less performative lib-owning and a lot more cooperation on keep-the-lights on issues and foreign policy. The power of the Freedom Caucus, which has dominated house politics for almost a decade, will be broken.
If Greene is successful in booting Johnson, things might get even worse. The Democrats do have a strong motive for letting Greene remove Johnson. Having congress paralyzed for weeks, or more likely months, while house Republicans try and fail to elect a speaker would probably finish off any chance Republicans had of holding onto the house.
It might even result in the election of a Democratic speaker. Governance-minded House Republicans are already furious with people like Greene and Matt Gaetz and, at the moment, that would only take three house Republicans doing a deal with Democrats and switching sides. From a purely political standpoint, losing the majority would actually help Republicans who have proven to be far better at opposition than governing.
So either way, Greene has backed herself into a corner. If she pulls the trigger, her influence will be the first – and likely only – casualty. If she doesn’t, she’s called her own bluff and no one will take her threats seriously anymore. There’s a moral in here somewhere.