As House Republicans return to work following their holiday break, there’s renewed chatter about Speaker Mike Johnson and whether the Louisianan will face a revolt from his right-wing flank. The intra-party drama hasn’t yet reached the stage that led former Rep. Kevin McCarthy to lose his gavel, but members are increasingly aware of the conversations.
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York told Semafor, “If they try it, they are f—ing idiots.”
The assessment might very well be true, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that we’ll see an effort to oust Johnson anyway. Fox News reported overnight:
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, made his bluntest threat yet against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warning that a motion to vacate the House Republican leader is “not off the table.” “I’m leaving it on the table. I’m not gonna say I’m gonna go file it tomorrow. I’m not saying I’m not going to file it tomorrow,” the Texas conservative said on “The Steve Deace Show” Tuesday. “I think the speaker needs to know that we’re angry about it.”
And what, pray tell, did the Texas Republican mean when he referred to “it”? There are, as it turns out, a variety of factors that brought us to this point.
About a month ago, for example, Johnson endorsed a bipartisan deal on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which omitted a variety of radical priorities. The speaker’s far-right members were furious and raised the specter of consequences for their party’s leadership team. The New York Times went so far as to say Johnson was facing a “political crisis“ of sorts in light of the criticisms he was facing from his own members.
The week before that, the House speaker faced fierce criticisms from members of his conference over his handling of former Rep. George Santos’ fate. That came on the heels of similar GOP pushback in November after Johnson backed a temporary spending measure that prevented a government shutdown.
But this week,…
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