Posted on 04/18/2024 9:28:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If the House GOP loses its majority next year, it might well be because Speaker Mike Johnson sold out Republican voters by failing to fund border security while working with Democrats to funnel billions more taxpayer dollars to Ukraine — after he repeatedly said he wouldn’t do precisely that.
Of course, it won’t take much to lose the Republican majority, which will narrow to 217-213 once Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., retires later this month. (Gallagher, whose last day was set for Friday, has said he’ll delay his retirement to help ensure Johnson’s Ukraine funding passes this weekend.)
November is not that far off, and between President Joe Biden’s fragile health and declining mental capacity, and Donald Trump’s legal (lawfare) troubles, the presidential election is very much up in the air. It won’t take much, in one direction or the other, to tip the balance of power in the House.
But the truth is, Johnson and Republican House leaders will deserve to lose their slim majority if they go through with their plan to enact the Biden administration’s agenda and send billions to Ukraine and Israel while refusing to do anything about the ongoing border crisis.
Whatever happens next, by any measure Johnson’s tenure as speaker has been an abject failure, a profile in spinelessness. Under his speakership, the Republican House majority has already dwindled by five (when Johnson was elected speaker, he had a 222-213 majority, nine seats) and will soon dwindle by one more. This shrinking majority is made worse by his and his lieutenants’ feckless leadership and unwillingness to play hardball with Democrats and establishment Republicans. After all, what good is even a slim Republican majority if you’re going to ignore what your voters want and work instead to pass Biden’s priorities?
And make no mistake, this is exactly what Johnson has done. Five months ago, he sent a sternly worded letter to the Biden White House explaining that “supplemental Ukraine funding is dependent upon enactment of transformative change to our nation’s border security laws,” and that before more tax dollars were thrown at the Ukraine conflict, the Biden administration needed to answer questions about our objectives, establish accountability for what we’ve already sent there, and define what a victory and “sustainable peace” will look like.
After that, Johnson more or less did nothing, and none of what he demanded came to pass. And yet Johnson is now working very hard to give Biden and the Democrats everything they wanted while getting zero in return — and still nothing has been done about the border. (Less than nothing, actually. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democrats this week disposed of impeachment articles without a trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom the House voted to impeach over the border fiasco. Senate Dems, who enjoy an even slimmer majority in their chamber, made it clear there will be no accountability for the Biden administration over the border.)
At one time, not long ago, Johnson talked a big game about the border. It seemed like he cared about it. As my colleague Jordan Boyd noted Wednesday, back in May 2023, before he was speaker, Johnson opposed sending more aid to Ukraine until Congress addressed mounting problems here at home. The U.S., he said, “should not be sending another $40 billion abroad when our own border is in chaos, American mothers are struggling to find baby formula, gas prices are at record highs, and American families are struggling to make ends meet, without sufficient oversight over where the money will go.”
Once he became speaker, Johnson softened his tone on funding foreign wars but still maintained that addressing America’s problems should come first. Even as recently as November, he said additional funding for Ukraine should coincide with “changing our own border policy.” In December he called the border crisis his “top priority,” and in January he actually went and visited the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, a hotspot for mass illegal crossings.
So much for all that. The border no longer appears to be his top priority or really much of a priority at all. It ranks below funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific, which are all set to get funding in an aid package — along with billions for Gaza, which is to say Hamas — that Johnson and other GOP House leaders are working with Democrats to pass over the objections of much of the Republican conference and the vast majority of Republican voters.
And they’re not even trying to make cogent or compelling arguments for what they’re doing. Speaking on Wednesday to CNN’s Jake Tapper (whose viewers, it seems, are Johnson’s actual constituency), Johnson repeated the Democrat and neocon talking point that unless we keep shoveling money into a grinding war of attrition in Ukraine, Putin will march through Europe. I’m not kidding. He said: “We are going to stand for freedom and make sure that Vladimir Putin doesn’t march through Europe.”
The Putin-will-march-through-Europe line was preposterous when it was trotted out over two years ago; today it’s indefensible, a worn-out neocon talking point that no one, not even those robotically repeating it like Johnson is now, really believes. Moscow, which has yet to secure even the areas of eastern Ukraine it claims to have annexed, has no ability to threaten Europe militarily. And even if it did, Russia has a unique strategic interest in Ukraine it does not have in Poland or other NATO member countries, let alone the whole of Europe.
But Johnson isn’t going to let facts on the ground get in the way of his tired establishment narrative — or better yet, Democrat narrative. As Will Chamberlain put it Wednesday on X, “We effectively replaced Kevin McCarthy with Chuck Schumer as speaker of the house.”
The obvious reality is that Speaker Johnson is a pathetic tool of the Washington uniparty, and the sooner he loses his gavel, the better off the country will be — even if it means Democrats regain a House majority. I’d rather have a coherent and unified opposition party than a complicit, compliant, and totally compromised GOP majority under Johnson. Especially if impeaching Biden is off the table, as it clearly is, then what exactly is the point of continuing to do business this way?
So yes, if Republicans lose their House majority in November, it’s Johnson’s fault. And in the long run, he’ll be doing us all a favor.
Trumpvwill only lose in your mind.
What Graham did was reinforce the biggest reason why Democrats always roll Republicans in the end.
Democrats in the House and Senate always coordinate their efforts in a one-two punch against Republicans. On the other hand, Republicans in the Senate have nothing but disdain for their fellow Republicans in the House. McConnell and his sycophants act like a House of Lords with the Representatives being beneath them.
Pelosi and Schumer would scheme to get bills passed, while McConnell is pressuring Johnson to abandon House bill and accept Senate bills? I always ask why? Why should Senate bills be deemed more important than House bills, especially when the House bills are original spending bills and Senate bills are amended House bills?
It's because Pelosi and Schumer see themselves as offense and defense on the same team, while McConnel sees himself with delusions of grandeur playing "iron man" ball and the House is just an obstacle in his way.
Until we can get our Senate and House to work together as one team, we will always lose to the Democrats.
-PJ
Need to get a party without all the embedded moles and saboteurs.
Lindsey, Sessions, Roberts, Johnson, and 99% of Senate Republicans.
Their only purpose is to defeat from within.
Yeah, the democratic Senate shut it down. But I was only showing what the House did.
That's the paradigm that Republicans are stuck in, and that needs to be changed.
As I just posted above, our side is stuck playing intramural ball while Democrats are coordinating across both the House and the Senate. Democrats see the "team" being the entire Congressional caucus, while Republicans see the House and Senate as being completely different leagues.
I put the blame for this on the Senate, and especially on McConnell. It's McConnell who won't work with Johnson (or even McCarthy before him). McConnell sees himself as the master deal-maker who needs nobody else's help. If only the best of both chambers would work to strategize together to counter the Democrats, we'd be in a much better place.
Because McConnell looks down on the House, the House is forced to look within itself to get by, and this limits our ability to get things done. Suddenly, factions inside the House become over-powered and we begin fighting amongst ourselves instead of aligning with the Senate before the game starts to have a unified game plan to move the ball forward.
-PJ
The IRS was not defunded in ANYWAY, the rest of the crap listed is NONSENSE, the major legislation like warrant less spying they folded like cheap suits!! GIVE ME A DAMN BREAK!!!
This has the makings of a good fiction Novel. The GOPee led by bean-brain leadership will lose the House to the RATs before the 2024 election. The RATs will then use the 14th amendment to prevent DJT from being elected. This will be the end of the GOPee after losing all their House and Senate seats up for re-election in 2024. The RATs new super-duper majority will soon finish financially destroying the country. The RATs won’t do this on purpose, but they’ve never read the last chapter of any book. The illegals who have been given citizenship and voting rights will figure out quickly to elect their own to run the House, Senate and country. There will be a huge struggle between the Cartels and various factions of formerly illegals to determine who will actually be in charge. To be continued..
As I said, McCarthy had individual spending bills working their way through Congress, for the the first time since Obama put the Omnibus in place. All that ended when McCarthy was removed, and we are back to the Omnibus again now. Removing the Omnibus should have been the #1 goal for this session of Congress.
McCarthy’s last bill also contained spending cuts, the last bill of spending cuts proposed this Congress. Showboater Gaetz wasn’t happy though, and killed it, and got McCarthy removed, for simply not sharing the proposed bill with Gaetz 48 hours in advance. McCarthy should have, but was pressed for time, and we haven’t seen another proposed spending cut since, that I know of.
We’ve gone 100% backwards under Johnson. Yet Gaetz now sits in his hands. Makes one wonder if he’s the one who’s been compromised, over that ethics probe.
This I KNOW.
There is ONLY one political party represented in DC.
The only question becomes is Trump a member?
Since Trump is not a dictator nor is that his desire as the haters would have you believe, he has to come to some kind of terms with what is in place.
Trump has to work with the party leadership that is in place, however treacherous it may be.
He may have supported McCarthy for the speakership, but what were his choices?
House leadership is voted on by the membership no one else.
In my view, the problem in the 2023 speakership election was the holdouts didn’t have the gonads to stay the course.
They should have had as many votes taken as it took for Lyin’ Kevin to step down.
I’m not sure who would have been the best replacement back in 2023, maybe Jim Jordan, but Jordan or any other serious candidate would have never actively sought the speakership until Lyin’ Kevin withdrew.
Gaetz and crew caved and got really NOTHING but the ability to take McCarthy out at a future date which they did and replaced him with Johnson who was a default candidate and neither ready nor qualified to lead.
I refuse to trash Trump as some on this board continue to do.
If Trump had his way he’d be fighting for those of us who want to save what is left of this shell of a Republic.
But Trump has to fight an all out war on every front just to attempt to run a viable campaign for office.
Trump is fighting like no one that I have ever seen on the public stage.
He is doing so at a great personal toll and cost.
I fear that the truth is a majority of Republicans holding office in the legislative branch could care less if it’s Trump or Biden who wins this next election.
For those of us outside the beltway who have been held hostage by the GOPe wing of the Uniparty our entire lifetime, it is foolish to think that there is a member in either Republican congressional caucus who is going step up and provide the leadership that those of us in the America First movement so desperately desire.
Sadly Trump and Trump alone is the ONLY hope this shell of a republic has left.
At this point...What difference does it make?
It’s all a calibrated effort by both parties. They’re going to keep Trump off the November ballot. My God people didn’t y’all see it coming!! Can you say blackmail with a capital B! The FBI CIA and DOJ know exactly how they’re playing their cards and one by one they are taking out their republican targets. Right now if they take over the house that’s it for Trump. It’s a colluded effort by the Republicans to do this to Trump. They can’t take him out in the legal courts. They’ll take them out by written articles by the rats as the house majority. Pesobic was right all hell is going to break loose before November. And our own republican leaders are our worst enemies! This is becoming a freaking nightmare!
If the republicans lose majority in the house, the fault is totally the voters.
If we had a block function, you’d be posting only to yourself.
It's not that McCarthy did or didn't (would or wouldn't, could or couldn't) get something done, it's that McConnell is not on the same team in the Senate and he would have undermined whatever McCarthy did to make his own deal to elevate his own ego.
That's why I constantly say that Republicans are being played by Democrats. If McCarthy was on track to get something passed in the House, it was because the Democrats wanted him to, to keep up the illusion of their scam.
Have you ever seen the movie The Sting? It all looks so real to the mark until the sting is pulled off. McCarthy thinks he had Pelosi's support. McCarthy is supposed to get a bill passed in the House. Great, so far.
But then Pelosi and Schumer know what McCarthy doesn't know: they know what they're going to do to that bill with McConnell in the Senate. I can assure you that it will have looked nothing like what McCarthy sent to them. And then McConnell would have pressured McCarthy to take the deal just like he did with Johnson, undermining McCarthy's authority in the House with his own caucus.
It's a win-win for Democrats: they get their agenda bill passed and they damage the credibility of the Speaker in the House, weakening the GOP for the next round of elections.
I've seen this movie before, many, many times. They keep remaking it with new actors, but the plot is always the same.
-PJ
Agreed!
Johnson’s Fault?
The Republicans didn’t know of his connections to lobbyists like the one in his crew?.
That’s not necessarily true. If all the Senate got was individual spending bills, as we were on track to do, they would have to fund the ones they wanted, and skip the ones THEY chose to skip. It’s the only way to ever get rid of the Omnibus. McCarthy’s last bill was the last one to contain any spending cuts too. All that ended with Gaetz and Johnson.
Maybe it’s time to consider Kennedy. Just to show we’re ready for a third party.
The problem with these Republican Party worshipers is they think the Republicans are with conservatives 80% of the time. In reality it’s more like 10% conservative and 90% liberals.
You can’t argue with them. They think they are entitled to conservative votes no matter how many times they betray conservatives. You must vote for the POS they trot out or the Democrats will win the congress they scream like stuck arrogant pigs! I ask you do the Democrats not win and control congress anyway when the Republicans win? Watching this current congress is proof that when the GOP wins, Democrats win.
It also didn’t seem to be a problem for the liberal Republican establishment to vote for their president BiteMe against Trump though and put the country through hell for their precious little club called the Republican Party own greed.
Johnson and 90% of the congressional Republican’s are intentionally destroying any chances of controlling the next congress. This is absolutely intentionally to stop Trump should he be elected.
If the House GOP loses the majority, IT IS ALL OF THEIR FAULT, INCLUDING THE CONSERVATIVES FOR ALLOWING THESE RINOS TO GET AWAY THIS THEIR CRAP. Sorry for yelling but I am sick of so called conservatives not doing their damned jobs elected for. My congressman included. Mike Rogers of Alabama has done nothing in my book. He sits there and I never, ever hear a damned thing out of his mouth. Never see him on TV making comments against this crap. NOTHING. Then I see first term people making comments. Makes me sick. And he keeps getting elected and elected and elected. I skip his name every election. Don’t vote for him any longer. Just had it with him. We might as well have an empty chair doing his voting. It’d probably do a better job!! Good freaking grief.
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