Marjorie Taylor Greene Introduces Measure To Oust Mike Johnson as House Speaker
Johnson could lose the speakership for the same reasons Kevin McCarthy lost it just five months ago. Who will be next?
Andy Warhol once said, "In the future, everyone will be House speaker for 15 minutes."
Well, he didn't say that exactly. But a similar sentiment is at play in Washington, D.C.
On Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) introduced a motion to vacate that would remove Rep. Mike Johnson (R–La.) as House speaker. Johnson was memorably elected to the position in October after hard-line Republicans ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) from the role—the first time the chamber had voted to remove a speaker in its history.
Now, Greene is threatening to do the same to Johnson, and for very similar reasons.
Greene's move came as the House voted to pass a $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill that has proved divisive among Republicans. "In a 286-134 vote that came down to the wire,… Democrats rallied to provide the support to overcome a furious swell of opposition by conservative Republicans," reported Catie Edmondson at The New York Times.
On the House floor, Greene expressed her "extreme opposition" to the bill and declared, "No Republican in the House of Representatives, in good conscience, can vote for this bill. It is a complete departure [from] all of our principles."
After the vote, Greene told reporters the motion was "more of a warning" and that "there's not a time limit on this." She added that "it's time for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats."
But with the possibility that House Republicans may oust their second speaker in five months, it's worth wondering how long it will take until they find a candidate who will pass muster—or if one exists.
After all, the case against Johnson is strikingly similar to the line of attack that took down McCarthy and gained Johnson the speakership in the first place. In removing McCarthy from power, some House Republicans called for a return to a more traditional way for the chamber to function, in which individual spending bills are brought to the floor, debated, and voted on—in contrast to the never-ending parade of omnibus bills slapped together at the last minute as a stopgap measure to fund the government for a few months at a time.
A return to tradition and order was exactly what Johnson promised in a letter to colleagues days before he was elected speaker—but within weeks, he was relying on the same sort of parliamentary tricks as his predecessor, passing stopgap appropriations bills that would maintain the same levels of government spending without allowing for any debate over potential cuts.
To be clear, the holdouts' stated demands were not unreasonable: While many called those who ousted McCarthy "wack jobs," "the wack jobs have a point: The federal budget process is broken, and it's been broken for decades," as Reason's Peter Suderman wrote in The New York Times. A return to normalcy would be a welcome change of pace, but Johnson was ultimately unable to deliver on his promise.
If Johnson is indeed removed, then it's worth wondering who else will try to step up to the plate. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R–N.C.), who served as interim speaker after McCarthy's ouster, is leaving Congress at the end of the current term. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R–La.), a logical candidate, withdrew from consideration last time after failing to win over the party's disparate factions.
Perhaps, to paraphrase Warhol's famous prognostication (which was, itself, likely apocryphal), every Republican will eventually get the chance to be speaker—until they, too, give in to politics as usual, run afoul of the rest of the caucus, and are removed from the position, allowing the next congressman to give it a try.
A member of Greene's communications staff did not immediately respond to Reason's request for comment.
