Dec.10

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

...And So Is Mike Johnson

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), whose conference in the House is unruly at the best of times, is coming under some truly withering fire right now, the lion's share of it from his fellow red teamers. A rundown of some of the many problem areas for Johnson:

• Health care is about to be front and center. Budget hawks are demanding that the BBB cuts be honored. Swing-district members are insisting that Republicans come up with some sort of a plan to soften the blow. And Johnson is caught in the middle.
  
  
• At the moment, defense spending is the focus of the lower chamber. Back in the summer, when the Freedom Caucusers were throwing one of their tantrums, Johnson promised them that he would incorporate their Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act into the annual defense appropriations bill. As it turns out, the Speaker did include that legislation in A defense bill, but not THE defense bill that is likely to become law. So, many Freedom Caucusers are hopping mad.
  
  
• A discharge petition is supposed to be a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency maneuver, as it is a direct challenge to the authority of the Speaker. In his tenure, Johnson has faced five of them. That sounds like a pretty small number until you realize that in the three-decade span before Johnson got his gavel, the House had a grand total of four discharge petitions.
  
  
• Similarly, members have been using motions of censure to snipe at their colleagues, sometimes colleagues in their own party. This not only wastes hours of floor time, it also makes it look like Johnson has lost control of the House.
  
  
• Many of the women in the House Republican Conference are particularly hostile to Johnson. Disdain for the Speaker is at least part of what made Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) throw in the towel. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) did an interview last week in which she called Johnson an "ineffective leader," said he "wouldn't have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow" and predicted that he won't be retained as party leader in the next Congress. Yesterday, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) seconded those sentiments in a New York Times op-ed, while blasting Johnson (and other Republican leaders) for marginalizing women. In Mace's view, Johnson is but a slight improvement over Kevin McCarthy (whom she voted to depose), and is considerably worse at his job than Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was. After the Mace op-ed went live, several other women in the Republican conference told NBC News that Mace is right about women members being marginalized.

How can we explain this dramatic uptick in publicly expressed Johnson criticism? We've been pondering it for a few days, and this is what we've come up with:

• He's a Scapegoat: This is the most obvious one. As we note in the first item above, it's a very tough time to be a Republican. Members don't like the election results they are seeing. They don't like the anger they are getting from constituents. They don't like the polls that are being released. They are probably nervous about their fundraising. Someone has to take the blame for this, and Johnson is the obvious target. Donald Trump is also an obvious target, of course, but anyone who points the finger at him does so at their own peril, unless they happen to be Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).
  
  
• Donald Trump: Speaking of Trump, Johnson has made himself a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization. Whatever the President says, goes, as far as the Speaker is concerned. It is entirely possible that this was a 100% necessary concession in order for Johnson to be able to keep his gavel. After all, he has a narrow majority, and an any-one-member-can-initiate-a-motion-to-vacate rule hanging over his head. If he angers Trump, Johnson could be done for. However, the trade-off is that the Speaker is supposed to be something of a firewall that protects members from the demands of the president, and gives them room to accomplish things. Johnson is not doing that, in any way, shape, or form, which means members feel like they are both powerless and are on their own. No wonder they are using special tools, like the discharge petitions, to lash out.
  
  
• He's a Sexist: That may, or may not, be exactly the right way to put it. And, truth be told, we wish we had thought to ask (A) or (L) to write this part before it was too late at night to do so. Oh, well. In any event, our (admittedly imperfect) experience is that evangelical folks like Johnson, Mike Pence, etc. have a certain way of interacting with women that works out OK for them when those women are evangelicals. However, that same approach works rather less well when interacting with women who are not evangelicals. What might be unconcerning or even charming to a woman who embraces separate-spheres/more traditional gender roles can very easily come off as patronizing or dismissive to a woman who is more egalitarian.
  
  What it boils down to is that we doubt that Johnson is sexist in a manner that is obvious to him. He's a politician, and a successful one, and this is not the 1940s. However, we also doubt that so many women members are completely imagining things. We thus conclude that we're seeing a clash of gendered worldviews. That said, if someone (e.g., Johnson) holds more 19th-century ideas, and does not properly adapt when dealing with a woman who is of a 21st century mindset, that is absolutely sexism. In fact, it's enough to get you fired or sued in many contexts.
  
  
• He's Got an Impossible Job: With a mercurial (and possibly not-all-there) president, a tiny majority, a fractured conference populated by many prima donnas and show horses, and a whole bunch of really touchy political issues that are about to come home to roost, Johnson has had an impossible task placed before him. Even Sam Rayburn, or Joseph Cannon, or Nancy Pelosi might not be up to it.
  
  
• He's Not Especially Good at His Job: That said, Johnson is not Sam Rayburn, or Joseph Cannon, or Nancy Pelosi. Recall that he did not exactly "earn" his gavel in the sense of working his way up through the ranks, networking, fundraising, etc. No, he got it because when McCarthy got canned, and the GOP was in the middle of an embarrassing "we can't get a new leader elected" mess, Johnson was loony enough to be acceptable to the Freedom Caucus, but sane enough to be acceptable to the rest of the Republicans in the House. There is no particular reason to think he'd be an especially smooth operator, and little of what he's done since taking the gavel has caused us to question that assumption. We'd say he's pretty average as a Speaker, maybe a touch below-average. And average/below-average are not likely to get it done when circumstances call for someone extraordinary, or maybe even more-than-extraordinary.

It is improbable, unless Trump turns hard against him, that Johnson will lose his job anytime soon. He is clearly very unpopular, but the House Republican Conference has the exact same problem that they had when they gave Johnson the gavel in the first place: a dearth of electable candidates. If Johnson gets the boot, and then the Republicans spend multiple embarrassing weeks trying desperately to pick a replacement, all while people are losing health care, prices keep rising, the Defense department keeps firing on Venezuelan ships, etc., that would be a disaster heading into an election cycle.

Still, Johnson's unpopularity and frequent lack of effectiveness will have consequences, even if he hangs on until the end of the 119th Congress. As we note, he's got some really tough battles coming up, including the defense bill (and then the rest of the budget), as well as whatever is going to happen with health care. The longer and uglier those battles are, the worse it is for the Republicans heading into election season, especially if they aren't able to actually get anything done.

The other problem is all the retirements. Already, 23 Republicans have decided to stand down at the ends of their terms, while four more have decided they can't even wait that long and have resigned. And, in contrast to the Democrats, those departing members are not mostly elder statespeople in the twilights of their careers. They are disproportionately committee chairs and/or members in their 40s and 50s, who should theoretically be entering their primes. Needless to say, if you lose the people who are supposed to be the next generation of party leaders, that can presage long-term problems. Meanwhile, the more open Republican seats there are, the more opportunities there are for Democratic pickups in November of next year.

One last thing. The House is currently 220R, 213D. There are two open seats (TX-18, NJ-11) that will be filled by Democrats, and there is one seat (GA-08) that will be vacated when Greene quits on January 5. So, for some period of time, it will be 219R, 215D. Several other Republican members have recently threatened to join the ranks of the early resigners, among them Mace and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE). It's still a long shot, but it's not impossible that control of the lower chamber could flip at some point (if maybe only for a short while). Given that GOP members are ALREADY finding ways to lash out, well, quitting in a way that gets Johnson demoted would certainly be the ultimate example of going out in a blaze of glory. (Z)