Tag: speaker
Mike Johnson

Speaker Begs GOP Caucus To Stop Hitting Him -- So They Hit Him Harder

The Republican House is finally back to official work.They kicked off their short week with a conference meeting in which Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly asked Republicans to stop publicly being mean to him on social media. That did not go over well. In fact, it backfired and the House was once again thrown into chaos.

“Conservative Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) emerged furious, telling reporters that Johnson ‘should never have been hired,’" Axios reports. Davidson also told reporters that he walked out of the meeting early because he did not want to stick around to hear Johnson and leaderships’ “drivel.”

The contentious meeting Wednesday featured a dispute between Johnson and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who might still be smarting about how badly he lost his own bid to be speaker. The hardliners in the conference are angry at Johnson over his agreement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). They made that clear both in the meeting and by taking the fight to the floor, once again shutting the House down.

Thirteen House Republicans voted against a procedural bill to start debate on three bills that aren’t even related to the funding fight. They pulled a trick that had only been used once previously in the last two decades to bring legislative business in the House to a halt. This is exactly what the maniacs did to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy when they were mad at him for trying to avoid a government shutdown. We all remember how that ended.

“We’re making a statement that what the deal, as has been announced, that doesn’t secure the border and that doesn’t cut our spending, and that’s gonna be passed apparently under suspension of the rules with predominantly Democrat votes is unacceptable,” Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good of Virginia told reporters Wednesday after the vote. The ever-present implication behind that now is that they can take another speaker down if they feel like it.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was one of the 13 and has been Johnson’s chief detractor on social media, most recently tweeting a graphic that showed a picture of Johnson and Schumer with a wad of burning cash, writing “doing nothing is better than doing what the @HouseGOP is ready to do.” He wasn’t feeling particularly chastised by Johnson on Wednesday.

Asked if he will keep this obstruction up, he told reporters, "We'll see … Right now, the point here is that we're not remotely satisfied." That’s pretty close to the response Roy recently gave on whether he was gearing up to oust Johnson. “[T]hat’s not the road I prefer,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “[W]e’ll see what happens this week.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Mike Johnson

Angry Republicans Already Considering Whether To Oust Their New Speaker

Just two and a half months into his job, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is leading a caucus of increasingly angered and frustrated Republicans, with some GOP lawmakers privately and even publicly attacking their new leader – after ousting their previous one.

Despite two possible federal government shutdowns looming – January 19 is the first deadline, followed by one on February 2 – House Republicans are furious that Speaker Johnson appears to be abiding by the law and a verbal agreement, one forged by his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, and President Joe Biden.

“Significant concerns growing about Mike’s ability to jump to this level and deliver conservative wins,” one “well-plugged-in” House Republican congressman told Punchbowl News. “Growing feeling that he’s in way, way over his head. As much as there was valid criticism and frustration with Kevin, Mike is struggling to grow into the job and is just getting rolled even more than McCarthy did.”

Punchbowl is calling this “Johnson’s Hell Week,” as the House will returns today “and Speaker Mike Johnson is set to get a very rough reception.”

“There has been a lot — and we mean truly a lot — of private griping among House Republicans about Johnson’s deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to lock in the Fiscal Responsibility Act for FY2024 spending.”

Count far-right Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) among those who are publicly griping about spending and about Johnson.

“The speaker’s office and everyone in town are trying to sell everybody a bill of goods. It’s not true,” Roy told the Washington Examiner, which notes, “When asked if he was referring to conversations about a motion to vacate and remove Johnson as speaker, Roy wouldn’t say.”

But he did say, “We’re just having the conversations we need to have about this continued failure theater.”

Monday night on CNN Rep. Roy was more forthcoming.

Asked if Republicans are going to try to oust Speaker Johnson, Roy denounced the spending bill then said, “I think there’s going to be some real conversations this week about what we need to do going forward.”

When pressed again about possibly ousting Johnson, Roy didn’t say yes but he didn’t say no.

“That’s not the road I prefer,” Roy replied. “I didn’t prefer to go down that road with Speaker McCarthy. We need to figure out how to get this all done together. But it isn’t good, and there’s a lot of my colleagues who are pretty frustrated about it, so we’ll see what happens this week.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Who Will Be Speaker In 2014?

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