The gig is officially up, not that anyone paying even cursory attention to the matter didn’t fully conclude as much from the start. But for those distracted or slow on the uptake, Matt Gaetz and the House nihilist caucus were never actually THAT opposed to short-term Continuing Resolutions (CRs) as a means to keep the government open. It was not about shutting the door, merely who possessed the keys to lock it down that ever really mattered.
The issue all along was what Kevin McCarthy surely understood it to be, when he accepted the Speaker’s gavel after a 15-round kabuki siege; it was always only a question of when and under what pretext the “motion to vacate” would arise. Turns out, branding desperate bipartisan efforts to keep the government open as a betrayal of “conservative principles” was as good a reason as any, and ended up working out just fine. Now MAGA owns the House Speakership.
Any doubts about the real Trumpist endgame evaporated last week when Gaetz himself told the posse of media constantly at his beck and call he was “open” to whatever “bridge” new MAGA hero Speaker Mike Johnson thinks may be appropriate. Suddenly, continuing resolutions are no longer apostasy, worth stopping America’s entire legislative process in its tracks.
Of course, Gaetz took pains to make clear “I don’t like governing by continuing resolution.” Apparently, the difference between Johnson, who had possessed the gavel less than 48 hours before floating a CR, and his predecessor is that “Kevin McCarthy wanted to govern by continuing resolution to get us to the next continuing resolution.”
Like W Bush gushed after meeting Putin, Gaetz has looked into the new Speaker’s heart and concluded Johnson “has a lot more credibility” that his CRs are in genuine service to the greater good of Freedom Caucus nihilism. Moving forward, expect the Florida “firebrand” to be more of a team player, and to support whatever means Johnson feels are necessary to achieve results sure to satisfy even the most stringent regressive orthodoxy.
Which is all just another way of saying they get no Trumpier than Mike Johnson… and that was the point all along. The entire stable of MAGA show horses – from Gaetz and Jordon, to MTG and Boebert, right on through to the Normans and Goodes etc. – have finally gotten what they were throwing one tantrum after another to achieve, a seditious extremist they can trust.
Make no mistake, in that regard Speaker Johnson checks off every box and then some. Creepy obsession with anything to do about sexuality? Check. Tax cuts as economic panacea? You bet. Not just climate change denial, but conflation of environmental science with dangerous “leftism?” Of course. Anti-abortion fanatic, Covid denier, pro anything with a trigger; it’s not hyperbole to argue Johnson is the most reactionary person in Congress. His scant resume tells the tale.
Worst of all, nobody on Capitol Hill embraced the Big Lie quicker and devoted more energy and resources his office afforded to legitimating its civic poison. If McCarthy was carrying Trump’s water, Johnson was pumping it from the well. Trump had barely spit out his post-election diatribe when Johnson cooed in his ear to “exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.”
Not two weeks after Election Day, Johnson was out front of cameras, and all in with Sidney Powell’s rigged Hugo Chavez election machine grift. “You know,” intoned Johnson, “the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that. And when the president says the election was rigged, that’s what he’s talking about.” Johnson would eventually lead the run of 126 House Republicans to sign on to Texas vs. Pennsylvania, the nonsensical case the Supreme Court couldn’t reject fast enough.
So what made Johnson so appealing that he was able to unite a hopelessly divided conference? His one asset? Acting like a jerk is not one of his defining traits, which makes him an outlier within the MAGA caucus. He’s actually capable of collegiality. Speak softly, but carry a big bogus amicus brief. Sometimes not being much is enough, so long as you don’t threaten opponents. Johnson was Jim Jordan in every way except for the latter’s ugly demeanor. The 20 “principled” Republicans who opposed Gym and his pressure tactics could live with that.
Johnson has right off the bat moved to confirm nihilist faith. Decoupling a bipartisan military aid package to Israel and Ukraine was unhelpful, but not fully unexpected; Johnson could argue with at least several shards of credibility that it is necessary in order to expedite backing to both nations. However, making aid to our closest allies under siege contingent on MAGA domestic priorities, such as paring IRS funding as a “budget offset,” is the sort of unprecedented outrage that only an OG Trumpist would pursue.
Moreover, with the Congressional Budget Office documenting such cuts will actually INCREASE the federal deficit, nothing is left to the imagination as to motivation. National interest is no match for Hannity talking points and Trump rally items. Determining the chicken or the egg with Johnson is an impossible task. He IS who he claims he must satisfy… a Freedom Caucus freak. Allies losing faith in American leadership doesn’t mean much to one who believes they should be on their own to begin with. Forget Russian aggression, we’ve got a southern border to lock down!
From the start Trumpism has been consumed with one primary task: making its malignancy more palatable. MAGA’s mission has always been about getting American culture and the politics it influences to once again tolerate intolerance, to abide attitudes and behavior that once was deemed disqualifying. Not too long ago, Mike Johnson would have been a nut, too whack for any public office, even in Louisiana. Now he’s a savior, elevated because those whose worldview and political positions he fully shares were permitted to bring the institution of Congress to rock bottom, where anything other than suicide gets embraced as salvation. Another metastasis of the cancer that plagues us. BC