Wait, Matt Gaetz isn’t blowing up Mike Johnson’s speakership for voting with Democrats?
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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With the help of nearly a hundred more Democrats than Republicans, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) passed a clean continuing resolution on Tuesday to keep the government open through the new year.
Although House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) eagerly fired off subpoenas with the hopes of moving forward with the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Johnson has remained mum on the matter, with leadership entirely blocking a separate attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
HOUSE PASSES SPEAKER JOHNSON’S CONTINUING RESOLUTION IN FIRST STEP TO AVOID SHUTDOWN
And weirdly enough, with the rest of Congress reportedly ready to resort to fisticuffs, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) seems sanguine. Although the Florida congressman was one of the 93 Republicans who voted against the bill, he made no threats to blow up Johnson’s speakership, not within the halls of the Capitol nor on Gaetz’s preferred turf of X, formerly known as Twitter.
On its face, Johnson’s government funding deal is less conservative, not more so, than that secured by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) earlier this autumn. Whereas the California congressman allied with Democrats to secure a one-month stopgap, bridging an extraordinary series of discretionary spending cuts, as well as border security aid, this deal negotiated by Johnson will fund part of the government through Jan. 19 and the other portion through Feb. 2.
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The frenetic response to Johnson’s deal is as revealing as it is fallacious. Gaetz ostensibly vacated McCarthy’s speakership because the latter passed a “clean” spending deal with Democrats, and Gaetz did so … by passing a “clean” deal to fire McCarthy with not just some Democrats but all of them. Then, after nearly a month, three failed candidates, and as many failed floor votes to replace McCarthy with a supposedly more conservative option, Republicans settled on Johnson, a congressman so anonymous that half of the Hill couldn’t identify him. After all that effort, commotion, and political capital incinerated, the Freedom Caucus invented the mechanism of the “laddered” continuing resolutions, only for Gaetz and company to vote against them, but silently.
The new speakership is not the same as the old one. It is worse, and that Gaetz is apparently so satisfied with it shows that his entire crusade against McCarthy was a matter of a personal vendetta, not a stand of principle.