The Neutering of the GOP House
Plus: “If the Democrats are fer it, we’re agin it.”
Sen. Bob Menendez is continuing to cover himself in glory out there, per Politico:
Sen. Bob Menendez may plan to blame his wife for actions that led to a federal bribery case against him, a newly unsealed court filing suggests.
The senator’s legal team plans to try to show the “absence of any improper intent on Senator Menendez’s part” by “demonstrating the ways” in which his wife, Nadine Menendez, “withheld information from Sen. Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place.”
We can see it now: “Your honor, it’s been alleged that I used my perch atop the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to advance the interests of a foreign government in exchange for huge bribes. However, I intend to prove my wife told me it was cool.” Happy Wednesday.
Mike Johnson, Coalition Speaker
It’s been months since House Republicans were a governing majority in anything but name. Since taking over the top job in October, Speaker Mike Johnson has talked a big game about championing conservative priorities, but thanks to the weakness of his minuscule and intensely fractious majority, he’s been forced to rely on Democratic support for crucial vote after crucial vote.
Now, that de facto coalition power structure in the House seems likely to become more explicit. Yesterday, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie—seemingly fed up with Johnson’s inability to unilaterally slash government spending to the bone and unwillingness to shut down the government out of pique over that fact—announced he plans to team up with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to throw the speaker out on his ear.
This time, however, the Republican speaker seems likely to get a life preserver from at least some House Democrats—although others seem tickled by the possibility that another wide-open speaker fight could wind up with Speaker Hakeem Jeffries atop a nominal Republican majority.
Even if Johnson survives another motion-to-vacate showdown, having to rely on Democratic votes to do so would further cripple him as a party leader, sapping his ability to win concessions from Senate Democrats and the White House in policy fights in the future. If you happen to care about Republicans achieving conservative policy wins, it’s a teeth-grinding state of affairs. Last week, National Review’s Rich Lowry denounced Greene’s case against Johnson as “a stew of conspiratorial thinking and sophomoric ranting”:
Doing a little somnology from afar, Greene also noted that Johnson is always complaining that he’s tired and only getting three hours of sleep. Since she, too, has been very busy in her life but always gotten seven or eight hours of sleep a night, she believes this shows that Johnson must have a guilty conscience that’s keeping him up . . .
Maybe Johnson’s sleep is disturbed by the thought that his majority is so small that someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene matters. And who can blame him?
It’s worth remembering how things got to this point. Despite his tiny majority and the prostrations he’d had to make to fringe elements in his caucus, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy spent most of last year managing to keep the government functioning while extracting modest concessions from President Biden on things like the growth of future spending when he could. He even greenlit highly embarrassing exercises like an impeachment inquiry into Biden as a way of showing his hard-right flank he’d be their staunch ally when he could.
But he refused to flip the negotiating table and spark a government shutdown—which led hardliners like Rep. Matt Gaetz to insist Republicans would be better off without him. Gaetz led the charge to strip McCarthy of power, then took a victory lap: “We’re concerned about the future of the conservative agenda in the house,” Gaetz told reporters after McCarthy lost the gavel. “I would say that the conservative agenda was being paralyzed by Speaker McCarthy . . . the best way to advance the conservative agenda is to move forward with a new speaker.”
Did this bold new conservative-agenda House ever materialize? Uh, no. Instead, blackpilled institutionalists started bailing out early, further whittling down the GOP majority by the day. Johnson is thus now in a more precarious spot than McCarthy ever was. McCarthy could afford to lose the support of four Republicans. Johnson will be cooked if he loses two, and is thus more beholden to Democrats than McCarthy ever was.
—Andrew Egger
The Republican Rot Runs Deep
Offhand comments can be revealing.
Late yesterday, in a quick interview in the halls of the Capitol, CNN’s congressional reporter Manu Raju asked Representative Garret Graves (R-La.) whether he agreed with Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to move ahead with four bills—aid for Ukraine, aid for Israel, aid for Taiwan, and one on related national security matters.
“In a word, no,” Graves answered. He went on:
Look, the reality is, you have to keep in mind President Biden asked for Ukraine, President Biden asked for Israel, President Biden asked for aid for Taiwan, and President Biden supports the changes to TikTok. What are Republicans getting out of this?
Pretty amazing.
Leave aside the issue of Ukraine for a moment, and consider the other three policies that the “President asked for.”
The reality is that Republicans overwhelmingly favor these policies. They’ve often pushed them more fervently than the Biden administration has.
Just a month ago, the Republican-controlled House got out ahead of Biden and passed legislation requiring precisely the changes in TikTok—divestiture by its Chinese parent company—that Speaker Johnson intends to have the House vote on again at the end of this week. 197 Republicans, including Rep. Graves, supported the bill. Only 15 Republicans voted no.
Late last year, after the October 7 attack, the Republican-controlled House passed a standalone bill providing aid to Israel. Rep. Graves joined almost all of his fellow Republicans in voting for the legislation.
And Republicans claim to be strong supporters of Taiwan.
In other words, three of the four bills the Speaker intends to bring to the floor haven’t merely been supported by Republicans in the past. They have been and are Republican priorities.
But because the Biden Administration also supports them, and because they are being brought to the floor as part of an attempt to also move forward aid to Ukraine, Rep. Graves now dismisses them as things President Biden asked for.
Once upon a time, a political party would be pleased to have the support of a president of the other party in passing legislation it claimed to care about. But today, being on the same side as President Biden is apparently the worst place any Republican can be.
And what about that last sentence, “What are Republicans getting out of this?”
The question is an embarrassment and, in a normal world, would be almost a scandal. But what does it say when your first thought about legislation—including national security legislation—including national security legislation you’ve favored in the past—is to ask what your own party “gets out of it”?
It says that opposing President Biden is more important than advancing national security priorities. It says party comes before country. It says nothing good about today’s GOP.
By the way, I might note that Rep. Graves isn’t some kind of fanatical MAGA true believer. He’s been a “normal” House Republican.
Graves was elected to Congress in 2014 after spending most of his adult life working as a Hill staffer to various establishment Republican House members. He was a close ally of former speaker Kevin McCarthy, who made Graves lead negotiator with the Biden Administration in last year’s debt ceiling crisis.
Like most Republicans, he did vote to reject the lawful Biden electors on January 6, 2021. And like most Republicans, he has been and remains a loyal Trump supporter. But he’s a mainstream House Republican.
But it’s now mainstream for Republicans to always put party first.
It’s now mainstream for Republicans to denigrate legislation they supported—and that, so far as I know, they still support—because President Biden also supports it.
The Republican Party is not a healthy political party. And while everyone knows its extremist tributaries are crazed, it’s also the case that the Republican mainstream is deeply polluted.
—William Kristol
Catching up . . .
Prosecutions of fake electors for Trump gain ground in swing states: New York Times
Biden to call for tripling tariffs on Chinese steel products: New York Times
Seven jurors picked in Trump’s New York trial as judge presses ahead: Washington Post
Arizona Democrats seek to repeal 1864 abortion ban, but need Republican help: Reuters
Boeing defends its planes’ safety ahead of whistleblower hearing: CNN
In Pennsylvania, Biden razzes Trump on everything but his trial: NBC News
Senate set for showdown over Mayorkas impeachment articles: CNN
Quick Hits: Showdown in Arizona
You’ve got to read Marc Caputo on the abortion politics currently roiling the Grand Canyon State:
Arizona Republicans have two-seat majorities in the state House and Senate. The overwhelming majority of the GOP caucus is either in favor of the 1864 law on the merits, or fear changing it would incur the wrath of social conservatives led by Cathi Herrod, the president of the Center for Arizona Policy. Herrod called on legislators to keep the 160-year-old law intact and make good on the promises many of them made in 2022 to stand by it.
Today, in a test of Trump’s influence, the Arizona House convenes and may take up the law to repeal it. A similar effort failed last Wednesday, before Trump issued his directive.
“Who are Republicans in the Legislature more scared of? Cathi Herrod,” says Chuck Coughlin, a veteran Arizona Republican consultant. “She has a lot of influence. She’s everywhere in the state Capitol. She pays attention. She has done this for decades. And you don’t cross her.” . . .
Anti-abortion activists have made clear they don’t like Trump’s new position on abortion as a states’ rights issue, but they’re hesitant to criticize him by name. Many also believe Trump would approve a federal abortion ban if he were president and it somehow got to his desk.
“Abortion is not merely a state’s right issue. Without the Supreme Court ruling in Roe, it is an issue for every level of government, as it should be. Any human rights atrocity that has resulted in the loss of more than 65 million lives deserves attention at every level of government,” Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins said in an email.
Another national leader on abortion, however, told The Bulwark on condition of anonymity that evangelical voters have nowhere to go but Trump. Picking Biden, the source said, was a nonstarter.
“We know Trump. We trusted Trump. He got Roe repealed,” the abortion opponent said. “This law is too harsh. We lose too much with it in November: the presidency, a Senate seat, and the legislature. The fact is these small-town lawmakers need to get with the program or their career is going to wind up in the trunk of a car. It’s finished.”
Cheap Shots
Just another day in the defendant’s chair:
What really makes no sense for me on Ukraine is that it isn't like the money is going off to eastern Europe, it's going to all american red blooded munitions manufacturers. It's spent in the USA. What am I missing here beyond the obvious that the GOP has become a useful idiot for Putin? Is it just that if Biden wants it, the GOP has to oppose it. That I understand. That's called ignorant stupidity.
"But it’s now mainstream for Republicans to always put party first." No Bill, it has been mainstream for 20 years. It kills me that you continue to run cover for "normie" Republicans - they are all the same. They are for whatever brings the party power and control. Full stop.