Backbencher Rep. Mike Johnson might have inexplicably landed a new role as House speaker, but that’s not likely to do anything to repair the dysfunction among House Republicans. In fact, it’s very likely that Johnson’s elevation marks a new era in which everything will be much, much worse.
One of Johnson’s “first tests,” as political journalists are so fond of saying, is shepherding a must-pass food and agriculture bill through the House, despite far-right hard-liners successfully stuffing in a provision banning the mailing of the abortion drug mifepristone nationwide. Those same hard-liners vow to scuttle the whole funding bill rather than back down on their demanded ban—but Republicans in Biden-won districts are vowing that they won’t vote for a provision that will likely mean the end of their political careers back home.
We’ll refrain from calling anyone who voted for the extraordinarily hard-right election denier Johnson a “moderate,” because that’s not even close to what that word means. But Republicans in Biden-won districts are keen on self-preservation. And that leads Johnson right back to where ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was: He’s got a bill that stands no chance of passing, no matter what he does.
“How Johnson proceeds over the next three weeks will provide one of the first looks at how he plans to navigate the pitfalls that ensnared his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, and whether he plans to make good on his promises to protect the at-risk Republicans who helped the GOP clinch its narrow majority,” writes Politico.
Politico counts up the votes and confirms that the self-preservation caucus has the votes to kill the bill, and they’re promising to do it. What Politico skirts around is that Johnson is one of the hard-right abortion abolitionists who have been demanding the House get to the work of a nationwide ban, and when a man stands up at the speaker’s podium to announce that he is there to do the will of God (subspecies Mike Johnson’s Personal Version Only), it seems difficult to imagine he’ll be going against what he believes to be divine guidance and instead forge some other position that ducks the issue and keeps the government open.
Presuming the faux Republican moderates eventually cave again, which is what happens every damn time because they are (checks notes) gutless, the most likely scenario is that the House passes an abortion pill ban the Senate won’t back, an under-pressure Johnson announces that there will be no reconciliation version, and there simply isn’t an agriculture bill for the foreseeable future.
Repeat that for every must-pass bill and you can see why a government shutdown is much more likely than not. And Johnson is not known, and has never been known, for negotiating compromises.
Get ready, because all of this is about to blow up in House Republican faces just as soon as they return from their little self-scheduled, post-humiliation break. Again.
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