The Republican House was meant to take a tough stance against Democrats and the Senate. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) had promised to pass a six-month budget (“Clean CR”) along with the SAVE Act, but it was a huge failure when 14 Republicans voted against it.
So what happened? Much of the answer depends on which down vote you're talking about and who you ask, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the chair and his team.
First, consider the Pentagon enthusiasts. Or “defense hawks,” or whatever you want to call them. These guys love the military, devour the horrifying classified briefings, and can't help but sign billions of dollars in credit card slips. Arlington's glittering executives say that any short-term funding deal would “endanger national security,” so these guys can't support CR.
You'll hear complaints about unruly, amateur staff from everyone from the Freedom Caucus to retired leadership staff, and when failures are repeated over and over, it's hard to ignore.
Sounds like a tough mountain to climb, right? It can be, but this is where you and your team come in.
An active and well-run office would work with the Republican floor whip to bring these men back into the party. Republicans in the Pentagon are rarely as tough as the ideologues, and with persuasion and a few sweet promises they can be won over.
But Johnson's fellow leadership colleagues appear not to have been privy to any of the planning – one anonymous MP complained to the Morning News that he had no idea what the plan was – and it's hard to actually crack the whip if you're not there where the decisions are made.
after that 12 Step Dreamers. These are conservative Republicans who (rightly) long for the days of a proper 12-bill spending process and (wrongly) will be infuriated by that system until those days return.
I say “wrong” because the last time Congress went through a proper spending process was in 1996, when, by comparison, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) wasn't even born. And I say “wrong” because six months of spending cuts are the best way to avoid a bloated omnibus budget, which the entire Congress opposes even more vehemently. Boring.
Either way, these people outnumber the rebellious Pentagon guys, they demand a process, and they are not going to vote for any scum Communist Party! … or at least not one that doesn't promise a massive war with the Democrats and a single party in the Senate at the end of it.
This is where our speaker comes in again.
Because that's not going to happen. There was reason in Washington to suspect that Johnson would not fight tooth and nail, telling the Senate, “There will be zero omnibus bills in my Congress. The issue is recovery or shutdown.” Johnson never said any of that, and his aides reportedly whispered in Congress that it was all a bluff, and that there was plenty of time to change course before the end-of-month deadline.
That means that conservative Republicans who might bend the 12 Bill rule for the sake of the fight will never win the fight. They were like the Highlanders in “Braveheart” who couldn't bring themselves to stand up to the British just so the nobles could negotiate some new titles. So they left the battlefield.
And finally, There was a McCarthy-crazed caucus.it's just a bunch of wild men (and women) throwing meat at the crowd and yelling, “Are you having fun?” Johnson had no intention of winning these men over, but that's just part of the calculation you start with.
But the rest is basically up to him. Don't just take my word for it. People from all walks of life are staring him in the eye. You hear complaints about an unruly, amateur staff from Liberal Party members to retired leadership staffers. And when it's all said and done, it's hard to ignore.
Even if you're looking at it strictly from the outside, not caught up in the barroom gossip that goes on all over Washington, D.C., you can picture a speaker who had the full support of the Republican candidate, but who publicly put a bill to a vote on the floor and it was defeated. How do you reconcile that with the power he holds?
So what's next?
First, we get a three-month continuing resolution, which ends with a fight over funding in December, when everyone wants to go home and no one wants to shut down the government, and then we get another bloated omnibus bill, courtesy of our friends at the Grand Old Party. Merry Christmas. Maybe something will change. But I don't think it will.
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