If you’re looking for an encapsulation of just how much of a mess the House Republican conference is, go no further than this headline from The Washington Post on Friday: “A majority of House Republicans retreat from their retreat.” It seems the one thing the majority of them can agree on is just how much they don’t want to have to deal with each other. Or maybe they just didn’t want to be subjected to more of House Speaker Mike Johson’s sermons.
Johnson was able to get less than half of his conference to show up at what was supposed to be the House GOP’s big strategy retreat this week. Participation was so pathetic that they had to scrap day two, which was supposed to be devoted to discussing policy and strategies for expanding the majority in this election. When it comes to the governing part of their jobs, they got nothin’.
Asked about the poor attendance, Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is in charge of putting together the annual messaging retreat, told reporters that Republicans still have an “enthusiastic conference.” It’s just that all the Republicans who didn’t show up had to be back home to campaign in their primaries. Supposedly, it had nothing to do with the fact that some members would “rather sit down with Hannibal Lecter and eat my own liver,” as one colorfully put it this week.
The meeting wasn’t devoid of policy or strategy, though. Johnson himself had one big (sort of) policy idea for Republicans to campaign this year: They could split up next year’s funding bills into four tranches, creating four separate government funding deadlines, if they keep their majority. Now that’s something to run on: quadrupling the shutdown-threat fun!
All that was left for Johnson to do with this small crowd of lawmakers was to plead with them to stop attacking and campaigning against each other. Johnson “just excoriated those who are campaigning against other GOP incumbents in their districts,” one of the lawmakers in a private meeting of about 60 members told Axios. “[He] said it violates our norms.” However, chances are that none of the people who needed to hear that message were in that room.
How pathetic all this is wasn’t enough to dampen Johnson’s can-do spirit, though. Here’s some hilarious hopium Johnson is pushing after the retreat debacle. “I think that overall we’re very excited about the fall, and that election can’t happen soon enough,” Johnson said Thursday.
Or maybe he just can’t wait for his horrible job of overseeing this chaos to end.
RELATED STORIES:
Republicans turn on House speaker as shutdown deadline nears
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s nightmare gets hilariously worse
Campaign Action