The Georgia Republican files to oust Speaker Johnson, saying he’s ‘in the arms of Democrats.’
WSJ Editorial Board
Speaker Mike Johnson claimed a victory for sanity Friday, when the House voted 286-134 to do its basic job of funding the government, rather than blunder into a pointless shutdown that would backfire on Republicans, or else pass further interim spending bills that hurt the U.S. military. Yet try telling that to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Raging about betrayal on Friday, Ms. Greene filed a motion to oust Mr. Johnson. “We have to find a new Speaker of the House,” she said. And if Democrats cross the aisle to keep Mr. Johnson in power? “He’s already in the arms of Democrats,” she replied. She called the legislation to fund the government “a Democrat bill” and “a Chuck Schumer bill.”
More Republicans voted no than yes, but understand political reality. Two years ago the GOP won the House by a historically narrow margin. If they’d stuck together, they could have used that leverage to extract more policy concessions from the Democrats who control the Senate and White House. But Ms. Greene and her faction are most interested in TV hits and internet donors. And once the GOP needs Democratic votes to pass a bill in the House, that gives even more leverage to Democrats.
This is the political position former Speaker Kevin McCarthy found himself in, and the GOP firebrands ousted him for it. They elected Mr. Johnson, saying he was a true conservative and not some squish, but now he’s getting the same treatment. Mr. Johnson’s sin is that he can do math.
Politics isn’t the art of the impossible, but Ms. Greene and her crew of vandals prefer to scream and throw soup at the walls, like those climate-change protesters who think their ludicrous gestures are accomplishing something. They have no strategy for achieving the conservative victories they claim to want, beyond shutting down the government and shouting for the cameras that everyone else is a sellout.
Ms. Greene on Friday called her motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair “more of a warning than a pink slip,” and the House will go on recess for two weeks. When it returns, Mr. Johnson will have to decide whether to take up an aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Ms. Greene is essentially ordering the Speaker to forsake American allies that need U.S. military help, or she’ll pull the trigger on her motion.
But after the weeks of tumult last fall following Mr. McCarthy’s removal, even Ms. Greene’s putative allies might be skeptical. Is this the vision for GOP governance that House Republicans want to offer in an election year? If Mr. Johnson isn’t conservative enough to succeed as Speaker, who would be? Call her bluff.
