Angry Republicans Already Considering Whether To Oust Their New Speaker
Speaker Mike Johnson
Just two and a half months into his job, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is leading a caucus of increasingly angered and frustrated Republicans, with some GOP lawmakers privately and even publicly attacking their new leader – after ousting their previous one.
Despite two possible federal government shutdowns looming – January 19 is the first deadline, followed by one on February 2 – House Republicans are furious that Speaker Johnson appears to be abiding by the law and a verbal agreement, one forged by his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, and President Joe Biden.
“Significant concerns growing about Mike’s ability to jump to this level and deliver conservative wins,” one “well-plugged-in” House Republican congressman told Punchbowl News. “Growing feeling that he’s in way, way over his head. As much as there was valid criticism and frustration with Kevin, Mike is struggling to grow into the job and is just getting rolled even more than McCarthy did.”
Punchbowl is calling this “Johnson’s Hell Week,” as the House will returns today “and Speaker Mike Johnson is set to get a very rough reception.”
“There has been a lot — and we mean truly a lot — of private griping among House Republicans about Johnson’s deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to lock in the Fiscal Responsibility Act for FY2024 spending.”
Count far-right Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) among those who are publicly griping about spending and about Johnson.
“The speaker’s office and everyone in town are trying to sell everybody a bill of goods. It’s not true,” Roy told the Washington Examiner, which notes, “When asked if he was referring to conversations about a motion to vacate and remove Johnson as speaker, Roy wouldn’t say.”
But he did say, “We’re just having the conversations we need to have about this continued failure theater.”
Monday night on CNN Rep. Roy was more forthcoming.
Asked if Republicans are going to try to oust Speaker Johnson, Roy denounced the spending bill then said, “I think there’s going to be some real conversations this week about what we need to do going forward.”
When pressed again about possibly ousting Johnson, Roy didn’t say yes but he didn’t say no.
“That’s not the road I prefer,” Roy replied. “I didn’t prefer to go down that road with Speaker McCarthy. We need to figure out how to get this all done together. But it isn’t good, and there’s a lot of my colleagues who are pretty frustrated about it, so we’ll see what happens this week.”
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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