Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be Speaker of the House for 15 minutes.”
Well, he didn’t say that Exactly. But a similar sentiment is at play in Washington, DC
On Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced a vacate motion that would remove Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as speaker of the House. Johnson was memorably elected to the post in October after hard-line Republicans ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) from the role — the first time the House has 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 proven divisive among Republicans. “In a 286-134 vote down the line, … Democrats rallied to provide the support needed to overcome a furious wave of opposition from conservative Republicans,” Catie Edmondson reported on The New York Times.
In the House, Greene expressed her “extreme opposition” to the bill and stated, “No Republican in the House of Representatives, in good conscience, can vote for this bill. It is a complete departure [from] all our principles.”
After the vote, Greene told reporters that the motion was “more of a warning” and that “there’s no 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 who will stand with the Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.”
But with the possibility that House Republicans could oust their second speaker in five months, it’s worth wondering how long it will be before they find a candidate who passes muster, or whether one even exists.
After all, the case against Johnson is strikingly similar to the line of attack that defeated McCarthy and earned Johnson the speakership. In removing McCarthy from power, some House Republicans have called for a return to a more traditional way of functioning of the House, in which individual spending bills are introduced, debated and voted on, as opposed to the endless parade of omnibus bills strung 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 had promised in a letter to colleagues days before he was elected president, but within weeks he was relying on the same kind of parliamentary tricks as his predecessor, passing bills on temporary appropriations that would maintain the same levels of public spending without allowing any debate on potential cuts.
To be clear, opponents’ stated demands were not unreasonable: While many called those who ousted McCarthy “odd jobs,” “odd jobs are right: the federal budget process is broken, and has been broken for decades,” as Reasonwrote Peter Suderman The New York Times. A return to normality 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 asking who other will try to come forward. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who served as interim speaker following McCarthy’s ouster, will leave Congress at the end of his current term. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R–La.), a logical candidate, withdrew from consideration last time out after failing to win over the party’s various factions.
Perhaps, to paraphrase Warhol’s famous prediction (which was, in itself, probably apocryphal), every Republican will eventually get a chance to be speaker, until he too gives in to politics as usual, clashes with the rest of the caucus and are removed from office, allowing the next congressman to have a go.
A member of Greene’s communications staff did not immediately respond Reasonrequest for comment.