September 19, 2024 10:05 AM UTC

Republicans Misunderstand Leverage in Stupidest Shutdown Threat

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• by: Colorado Pols

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is really not very good at this whole governing thing. Like, historically bad.

With less than 50 days to go until the 2024 Election, Johnson on Wednesday tried to ram through a continuing resolution to fund the government tied to a proposal so idiotic that many House Republicans publicly insisted for more than a week that they wanted nothing to do with the effort. Despite multiple demands from GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump that Republicans connect a government funding resolution to the so-called “SAVE Act” — Republican-led legislation that seeks to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections (a repetitive nonsense measure given that only citizens can vote already) — the effort failed as predicted. As The Washington Post reports:

The House on Wednesday rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to fund the government for six months, cranking up tensions around a fast-approaching government shutdown deadline not only throughout Congress but also within Republicans’ brittle House majority.

Fourteen Republicans joined with Democrats to block Johnson’s bill, which combined a six-month extension of federal funds at current spending levels with a measure the House already passed requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in national elections. The Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House oppose the House bill, because of the length of the extension and because of the registration provisions.

Funding for the federal government expires Sept. 30, and without an extension, most federal government operations would shut down Oct. 1 as millions of Americans begin early voting in November’s election.

Wednesday’s result — a 220-202 vote with two voting present — was hardly in doubt. GOP lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum had said publicly for more than a week that they opposed the legislation. But Johnson (R-La.) has insisted there is “no Plan B” to prevent a shutdown if the bill fails. [Pols emphasis]

It is curious that Johnson says he has no backup plan for passing a government funding resolution, particularly when it wasn’t much of a surprise that the measure failed.

Johnson (and Trump) were demanding a pointless display of political grandstanding for election-year messaging purposes at the risk of creating an even worse election-year narrative that would be used by Democrats to cripple the campaigns of vulnerable Republican incumbents nationwide. The members of the House Republican caucus who are not completely brain dead understood that, 1) Any government shutdown would be a DISASTER for their re-election hopes, and 2) Voters weren’t going to reward Republicans for refusing to fund the government over the unnecessary “SAVE Act.”

Johnson (and Trump) had ZERO LEVERAGE here with vulnerable Republican House Members because trying to hold government funding hostage is a much bigger political risk than declining to support the “SAVE Act.”

Should Republicans manage to maintain a House majority after the 2024 election, it’s hard to see how the GOP could stick with Johnson as Speaker of the House. As Dana Milbank wrote for The Washington Post on Tuesday:

In 11 months as speaker, Johnson has led the House Republicans not to the promised land but into deeper water, where they have been thrashing, splashing and dog paddling without end. Johnson inherited a dysfunctional House GOP majority from Speaker Kevin McCarthy — the first in history to be ousted midterm — and managed to make it even worse by catering to the whims of former president Donald Trump even more than his predecessor had.

At the moment, Johnson and his caucus are in a typical crisis of their own making. The government runs out of money in less than two weeks, and Trump has ordered Johnson to shut it down if Democrats won’t swallow a poison pill that makes it harder to register to vote. But after a seven-week summer recess, Johnson tried to put the plan on the House floor last week — only to pull it because he didn’t have enough Republican votes. He’s trying again this week, against long odds. With days to go before a shutdown, House Republicans don’t even have a concept of a plan.

Why would Johnson force a doomed vote on such a terrible proposal? He may have felt obligated to Trump, whose whims he has observed throughout his Speakership in exchange for Trump’s public support to keep him in power. It was because of Trump, remember, that House Republicans cratered what was a very strong immigration reform bill earlier this year; as we wrote at the time, Trump didn’t want immigration reform because then he couldn’t campaign as hard on immigration reform.

Johnson is also trying to organize a caucus of morons, many of whom demand absolute fealty to “Orange Jesus.” The logic of Republicans not wanting to risk a government shutdown is easy to understand… unless you are someone like Congressperson Lauren Boebert:

This take from Boebert is funny for several reasons, including the fact that she completely misunderstood what fellow Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was actually saying in her own social media post. The argument from MTG that Boebert missed is that this was all pointless posturing from the jump:

Johnson is leading a fake fight that he has no intention of actually fighting.

Even with a shutdown and full fight into Oct, it would be too late for the SAVE Act to make a difference for this election because absentee ballots would already be being mailed and early voting already starting.

Before the vote on Wednesday, Johnson meekly claimed during a press availability that Americans would blame Democrats in the Senate for any potential government shutdown. Nobody believes this, of course, because decades of government shutdown battles have demonstrated that voters tend to place blame in this situation on the Party that controls the House of Representatives. But just in case, Boebert’s dumb ass made sure to remind reporters that the House of Representatives is responsible for funding the government. We’ve said it again and again: Boebert may be annoying to Democrats, but she’s a much bigger problem for Republicans.

Johnson has now wasted the first two weeks of work following the August recess and has just two more weeks to figure out a way to fund the government before October 1. Johnson’s capitulation to the dimmest bulbs in his caucus all but guarantees that he will now be forced to negotiate a spending deal with Senate Democrats with no leverage of his own.