Status Report: The GOP Conference. Hoo Boy.

Republicans really lit themselves on fire by the end of the week.

Images courtesy of MSNBC

It’s difficult to describe, in any succinct way, how dysfunctional the Republican conference in the House has become. Perhaps it’s best just to list all the things that went down in the final days before their two-week spring recess, and hope that it will paint a sufficient picture.

Here’s a handy bullet point list before I break it down in greater detail.

• Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) turned to Democrats, once again, to pass the final budget bill to avoid a government shutdown. And he was unable, once again, even to secure a “majority of the majority” of Republicans in support.

• House banshee Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA), outraged over the budget bill passing, filed a motion to vacate the chair right before the recess. It could throw the party into total chaos once more.

• Head Oversight Committee clown Rep. James Comer (R-KY) told Newsmax that an impeachment vote on Joe Biden was not the “best path” forward, effectively throwing in the towel.

• Yet another Republican member, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), announced he was retiring from Congress early, bringing the GOP’s margin down to just one defection on any vote.

• Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who is also retiring early, signed his name to the Democratic-led discharge petition that seeks to go around Speaker Johnson on the question of aid to Ukraine.

• Speaker Johnson, sensing his job is very much on the line, indicated that he would now move the Ukraine and Israel aid bill forward, and Democrats appear ready to throw him a lifeline on the motion to vacate in exchange.

It’s a true MAGA clustermuck. Let me say just a bit more about each development.

It’s the budget, stupid

One year and one deposed speaker later, and we finally have a budget that funds the government through to September 30, the end of the fiscal year. Spoiler alert: It looks a lot like the budget former Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with the White House and Senate Democrats in spring of 2023. In fact, it contains all the same concessions that got McCarthy booted by his party in the first place, which is probably why the Freedom Caucus is so hopping mad.

It was always going to end this way. From the get-go, the only questions were whether the GOP would dare to 1) blow up the debt ceiling, or 2) shut down the government over the budget, despite controlling only one half of Congress, and barely at that. They blinked on the debt ceiling last spring, but not before looking like absolute fools for trying. That made their threats over shutting down the government also look weak. It’s as if they said, “We’ll destroy everything to get what we want!” But then Biden called their bluff, so in response they (checks notes) got rid of their own hostage negotiator, then put up a meek and inexperienced one who said, “We’ll still hurt you real bad!” And then Biden shrugged again.

It’s not like this president hasn’t seen this kind of game play out before in his decades of experience, which is something Johnson clearly didn’t have the benefit of. If McCarthy couldn’t get a better deal, there was no way their fourth recruit for the job could.

Here’s an amazing fact. This GOP-led House has only passed 47 bills. But they don’t even get to count six of them, because those were just to keep the government open. And the budget bills were all passed with more Democratic votes than Republican, meaning it’s the Democrats who are actually in charge of the House’s main role.

By contrast, the “do nothing Congress” Harry Truman ran against and beat in 1948 passed 906 bills.

Marjorie Three Names takes her shot…and foolishly gives up her leverage

She had been threatening to do so for some time, but on Friday Rep. Greene made good on that threat by formally filing a motion to vacate the chair. Angry over extremists being pushed out, with the extremists’ insane budget demands ignored once more, Greene took it out the only way she knew how: on House leadership.

This all traces back to the disastrous rule change that former speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to as a condition for the support of the Freedom Caucus—the right of any single member to make a motion to depose the speaker. McCarthy was felled by this for daring to kick the budget can once more down the road rather than allow a shutdown, the kind of “burn it down” move that the extremists now regularly demand as their pound of flesh.

Presently, Greene (who knows she can fundraise off her outrage and her chaos-creating move) has taken aim at Speaker Johnson. Notably, she did not file her motion as a “privileged” one, meaning it would be postponed and taken up after the recess instead of right away. It isn’t clear if she intended, then, for this to be a warning shot or if she really does mean to force a vote upon the House’s return.

But in filing her motion, she has effectively forced Johnson to go into protective mode. He will face a revolt from his right flank, and unless he gets some Democrats to save him, he could go down just as McCarthy did. It’s quite interesting to me that, in the wake of her motion, Speaker Johnson indicated to reporters that he finally intends to bring the Ukraine aid bill to a vote. That may win him enough support from Democrats for him to keep his job.

If I am correct about this causality, and Johnson really does bring Ukraine aid up for a vote in April, it would mean that Greene unwittingly resurrected the aid bill by directly threatening Johnson’s job.

The irony is rich and quite delicious.

Comer comer comer karma chameleon

Boy George, I think he’s got it! The hard reality, that is. After his star witnesses wound up on the lam or indicted, his follow Republicans resigned from Congress rather than continue down this path, and his 15 months of flailing around for evidence produced exactly nothing, it seems Rep. Comer is finally giving up on impeachment.

As The Hill reported on Thursday,

House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) suggested the impeachment vote against President Biden may not be the “best path” and said he instead thinks criminal referrals will be the way to go.

“I believe that the best path to accountability is criminal referrals,” Comer told Newsmax hosts Thursday.

Yeah, good luck with the latter. A criminal referral requires the Justice Department to assess that a conviction would be achievable beyond a reasonable doubt, but in this case the GOP can’t even get a majority of the House they control to agree that there is a preponderance of such evidence. That’s because Comer’s Oversight Committee is actually operating upon “no evidence.” If they bring the criminal referral to a vote, it could well go down in flames on a floor vote, too. It really should, if there are any GOP members with a shred of integr—oh, never mind.

We can add “failed impeachment inquiry” to a long list of things Democrats can point to in November as evidence that the GOP not only cannot govern but can’t even function effectively as partisan hacks.

And then there was one

The surprise announcement by Rep. Gallagher that he was leaving Congress early sent shudders through the Republican party and its media supporters. When he leaves mid-April, it will bring the balance of power to 217 / 213, meaning that the GOP can only afford one defection before losing a vote on any bill. (Two defections means a 215 / 215 tie—which isn’t a winning majority.)

On any given bill, there is a strong chance of absences, so don’t expect that the GOP will be able to get much done, especially with an angry right wing known to sink bills out of spite.

Even Fox Network couldn’t hold its disgust back. Said anchor Laura Ingraham,

Now, I've been in Washington, and it's just depressing to report, but 30 years, I have never witnessed what I’m witnessing now, a party with a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, everything on the line in the country but committing a slow suicide. This is why conservatives call the GOP the stupid party, by the way.

Fun fact: Rep. Gallagher timed his departure to inflict maximum pain upon the GOP. Under Wisconsin law, if he leaves after mid-April, then the seat can’t be filled through a special election. They’ll have to wait until November.

Gallagher announced that he’s leaving just after that, on April 19. Well played.

Put my name down, please, and good riddance

Another parting F-U came from Rep. Ken Buck, a staunch but more traditional conservative who has had it with his own party. Buck became the first Republican to sign his name to what’s called a “discharge petition,” in this case to force the Ukraine aid bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote. The petition now has 188 signatures on it, out of the 218 it would need.

It’s unclear what’s going on behind the scenes, and there are “dueling” discharge petitions, one from the Democrats and one from less extreme Republicans in swing districts. Buck’s move creates a “permission slip” of sorts to cross party lines, one that was almost unheard of before, but these are interesting times.

Under House rules, even though Buck officially retired Friday, his name will remain on the petition until his successor is elected. It truly was a parting middle finger to Johnson.

The pressure around Ukraine aid has been building, and as I discuss below, the dam may finally be breaking with an unwitting assist from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Lifeline: Can I call a friend?

The free world has watched with collective horror as the GOP has played politics with Ukrainian lives, holding up a critical military aid package in order to force concessions on the border, then backing off from that very deal in order to placate their Dear Leader, who needs border chaos as a key campaign talking point. All the while, our allies in Ukraine have watched their ammunition and supplies dwindle, and Putin has been emboldened, raining a barrage of hell down upon Ukraine and preparing for a massive spring offensive.

The aid package, covering Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and Gaza, has broad bipartisan support. It would easily pass if brought to a vote. But the GOP holds a threadbare majority, which means Johnson, as Speaker, could simply prevent a vote from ever happening. His right flank, including Greene, had long threatened to move to depose him if he brought the aid bill up for a vote, and so he has demurred for months while more Ukrainians die. He’s been more interested in saving his own job than saving lives and securing peace.

But now that Greene has made her motion to vacate anyway, Johnson has nothing to lose by allowing the aid bill to come forward. She can’t do any worse to him than she’s done. Meanwhile, a few Democrats, including newly elected Rep. Tom Suozzi, who replaced the fabulist George Santos (who announced he will run as an independent in NY-1, potentially siphoning enough votes off the GOP candidate to flip the seat), have come forward on the record to say they will vote to protect Johnson, especially if he permits Ukraine aid to move ahead.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) indicated he was a vote to save Johnson, too, in a post on X: “I will never stand by and let MTG to take over the people’s House.”

“I think this is a great way to set up a deal on Ukraine aid,” another unidentified House Democrat told Axios.

At this point I am guardedly hopeful that, when recess is over, Speaker Johnson will bring the aid bill to the floor and win the support of key Democrats to pad his chances of surviving the motion to vacate. The politics of this are decidedly ugly and petty, while the stakes for the Ukrainian people and indeed the entirety of the free world are enormous. If he does bring the bill up and it passes as expected, history may record that the impasse was broken because Rep. Greene was not only reckless and spiteful but also dumb as rocks: She played her sole card early and gave up all her leverage.

This would again prove Ingraham correct. They really are the stupid party.