This week should have proved once and for all to Republicans everywhere that the MAGA minority in Congress is ungovernable and, worse, opposed to having a government at all. New House Speaker Mike Johnson faces the same reality that every recent GOP speaker has faced, but it looks like it might get worse than what even former Speaker Kevin McCarthy dealt with.
Once again, the only way Johnson could get a continuing resolution to keep the government running was with Democratic votes—the same way McCarthy did it (though with a hint more grace and far less drama). And once again, the minority of Republican maniacs who run the show hit back. In McCarthy’s case, the rebellion led to his ouster. But so far, they aren’t threatening that for Johnson. However, they did grind the House to a legislative halt, again, preventing it from passing appropriations bills that they should have loved, larded down as the bills were with the MAGA maniacs’ own poison-pill provisions.
You can lay this situation at McCarthy’s feet. He gave the place away to the maniacs in exchange for holding the gavel for nine months. That included putting three of the most extreme members in the GOP conference—Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky—on the powerful House Rules Committee. They’re the ones responsible for making sure every extreme amendment from the likes of Andy Biggs, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert gets a vote on the floor.
Those amendments are why the “moderates” in the GOP joined the hard-liners in shutting down the latest appropriations bill, voting against a procedural rule to advance it.
Rep. Nick LaLota, a Republican from New York, voted against it in protest of having to keep taking disastrous votes on far-right amendments that are doomed to fail. “The amendments are going to fail, the bill is going to fail, it won’t get sent to the Senate, it won’t be signed by the president,” LaLota said.
By the way, that trick of blocking a motion to proceed to a bill hadn’t been used by majority members in the House since 2002, and back then, it was used just once. It’s been deployed several times by Republicans just since June. This is how broken the House is since “regular” Republicans folded and let the small group of extremists run the show.
Speaking of broken, ladies and gentlemen, meet the Senate where a growing MAGA contingent promises to bring some of the House chaos to the upper chamber. From Oklahoma’s brawling Markwayne Mullin to Alabama’s one-man national security threat, Tommy Tuberville, we’re moving far beyond the traditional GOP obstruction with filibusters and into unprecedented territory.
Democrats salvaged something from all this wreckage this week: the continuing resolution that will keep the government operating for the rest of the year. No question, that’s a great thing to have accomplished. But because Democrats did it, the MAGA rampage will get even worse, and it’ll start as soon as Congress returns from its Thanksgiving break.
In other words, getting those appropriations bills done in a few months comes down to Johnson realizing that if he wants to succeed in this job, he’ll have to break the hold the minority nihilists have on the House. That means working with Democrats on everything from determining spending in bills to restructuring the Rules Committee to end the maniacs’ control of it. If the House ceases to function—which we are perilously close to—the legislative branch doesn’t work. The Senate can’t legislate by itself. While we’re talking reform, Senate Republicans have to bow to reality and vote with Democrats to stop Tuberville from kneecapping the nation’s military.
The big problem, as always, is MAGA king Donald Trump. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is more likely to use Trump for potential political gains than to renounce him for the good of the country. Johnson—one of Trump’s lead insurrectionists following the 2020 election—is proving even more willing than McCarthy to grovel to Trump.
Even when Republicans must know it’s against their best interest to spiral down the MAGA toilet, that’s what they’re going to do. That is, unless Johnson has any ambition to remain speaker after 2024. The easiest way for Congress to remain in Republican hands past 2024 is by showing they can govern, which they cannot do unless they get Democrats to hold their hands and show them how.
That’s exactly what Democrats should not do, though, unless they get something significant in return, like an end to bogus impeachment efforts and a say in what legislation comes to the floor. This past week might have been enough for Johnson to grasp the futility of letting the maniacs continue to rule, but I wouldn’t count on it.
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Republicans are challenging labor leaders to fights and allegedly physically assaulting one another. Donald Trump says he will abolish reproductive rights entirely and is openly calling for the extermination of his detractors, referring to them as “vermin” on Veterans Day. The Republican Party has emerged from its corruption cocoon as a full-blown fascist movement.
