Poor Mike Johnson. Less than a month into his new job, the Freedom Caucus has already cooked up fresh scorn for the House speaker.
While he was able to avoid a government shutdown, it appears that in doing so he brought his honeymoon as the GOP’s new leader in the House to a quick close. The far right of the Republican conference is already agitating for him to deliver on their implausible demands.
It would appear that changing the speaker hasn’t changed the Freedom Caucus’s fortunes.
On Wednesday, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a third-term member of the House Freedom Caucus, took to the House floor to vent his frustration. “When we come back from Thanksgiving, I’m hearing lots of promises about what we will do,” said Roy. “Let me just lay down a gauntlet here: We better damn well do it.”
But it was his excoriation of the House’s record this year that was most remarkable:
One thing. I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One. Anybody sitting in the complex: if you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides, “Well, I guess it’s not as bad as the Democrats.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-TeXas
It would appear that changing the speaker hasn’t changed the Freedom Caucus’s fortunes.
Roy’s bellicosity was triggered by Johnson’s supposed betrayal of the right by passing his stopgap measure to keep the government open without any spending cuts, and relying on Democrats to help carry it over the finish line. It was the same type of short-term bill that cost Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker, his job.
Even as we’re increasingly numb to the antics of the Freedom Caucus, Roy’s speech was extraordinary for how it questioned the entire existence of the House Republican majority. It is fair to wonder whether Roy was voicing of honest frustration or, more likely, selfishly grandstanding at the expense of his…
Read the full article here