MAGA Republicans still haven’t learned how to govern
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All eyes will be on House Speaker Mike Johnson when the House returns next week. He has a lot on his plate, including a controversial approach to approving more military aid for Ukraine. Whether that specific gambit succeeds or not, it’s become increasingly clear that he’s not the man to bring the Republican Party’s internal factions together.
Republicans have held the House majority for all but four years since the 2010 landslide swept them back into power. Leaders of such parties are typically rewarded for their stewardship. Not so for the GOP. Johnson is now the fourth person to wield the Speaker’s gavel over the party’s nearly ten years in the majority.
This is not normal. Democrats have only had two leaders during that span, and that’s only because former Speaker Nancy Pelosi voluntarily surrendered the gavel in 2023 as she approached her 83rd birthday. Including current House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, the last four Democratic leaders have spent nearly 35 years in their posts.
The GOP’s instability at the top is a direct result of their instability at the bottom. That 2010 landslide brought in a new crop of strongly conservative, anti-establishment lawmakers. Unlike prior groups of landslide babies, who bided their time before acquiring power, some in this cohort believed they had been elected to foment dramatic changes immediately. It didn’t matter if they weren’t a majority of the Republican membership; even fellow party members who did not share their revolutionary zeal were deemed part of the problem if they didn’t follow suit.
This group, loosely formed into a “Freedom Caucus” in 2015, has bedeviled the party ever since. They have regularly refused to go along with the overwhelming majority of the caucus and rarely provided a clear sense of what they would accept to rejoin it. Their antics drove Speaker John Boehner of Ohio to resign in October 2015 rather than face a motion to vacate the chair filed by a Freedom Caucus member. His successor, Rep. Paul Ryan lasted only a little more than two years before he announced he would not run for re-election in 2018. Ryan’s successor, Kevin McCarthy, steered the party back into the majority but lasted less than a year in the Speaker’s chair before becoming the first Speaker in history who lost a motion to vacate on the House floor.
The manner of Johnson’s own ascension exposed the bitter divisions within the conference. Only in his fourth term in Congress, he had never held a leadership position in either the House or the Louisiana House of Representatives, where had served one term. He was the fourth person nominated by the party to succeed McCarthy, arising only after recalcitrant conservatives or establishment Republicans spitefully refused to back the conference’s prior selections. Johnson had all the earmarks of a classic “dark horse” whose primary attribute was that he had fewer internal enemies than any other plausible nominee.
He has done little since to disprove that assessment. Johnson has lost votes on the floor, something a competent leader never allows to happen. He has failed to resolve the longstanding internal disputes on policy, which is why America is still without a budget seven months into its fiscal year. Johnson has also come to rely on Democratic votes to overcome the minority faction in his party on stopgap measures. He has ineptly allowed himself to be maneuvered into a de facto coalition with House Democrats where they share none of the burdens or responsibilities.
Solving this longstanding problem would tax the talents of any politician. Johnson, however, seems ill-suited to the task. He seems unable or unwilling to use the few tools at his disposal to punish dissenters, while also lacking the imagination or persuasion to bring them into the fold. Someone who can neither persuade nor command is not someone who should wield power.
This problem would be ameliorated if Donald Trump returns to the White House. If he were to say that he wants a new Speaker – say, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik – who held his confidence, it’s hard to see how the disunited and exhausted members could refuse him. That person could then limit their responsibilities to loyally carrying whatever legislation Trump sends for consideration and providing members with money and messaging to help them return. Johnson himself could even potentially remain under that limited role – at the cost of whatever dignity he still has.
Even this solution only postpones resolution of the real problem, the gap between the expectations of the GOP’s base and the political realities they face. Slim majorities of Republican primary voters may want a dramatic retrenchment in federal spending and a sharply conservative and religious-toned domestic policy agenda. The country, however, does not. Democratic leftists have long chafed under similar challenges, but they almost always end up negotiating for what they can get and carry on their overall battles later. Republican conservatives have yet to learn that lesson.
Nancy Pelosi famously says that power is taken, not given. If Johnson doesn’t learn that lesson soon, he will likely earn an unwanted place in history as one of the shortest-tenured speakers ever.
