On Tuesday, after the Senate passed a bipartisan aid package for Ukraine and Israel, MAGA Mike said he has no intention of allowing it to get a vote in the House. Rachel Bade and team reported he’s trying to get a meeting (already turned down) with Biden “to discuss next steps. Beyond that, Johnson right now appears to be a man without a plan. We caught up last night with several House GOP insiders, and each one told us it appears as though Johnson is flying by the seat of his pants, polishing his reputation for dithering in the face of tough decisions… Johnson’s own senior leadership team remains entirely in the dark about what he’s thinking, and there are plenty in that cadre who say flat-out that this ain’t going anywhere— ever. ‘I’m as confused as ever about what he wants,’ one House GOP insider told us. ‘He hasn’t given us any direction… I think right now he’s in survival mode.’ ‘Kevin would have a strategy, he’d shop it around, then he’d make a play call,’ another said. ‘The more I’m around Johnson, the more it’s clear to me he doesn’t have a plan.’”
After an internal Republican civil war over FISA got out of control, MM was unceremoniously forced to scrap plans to deal with the reauthorization legislation this week, making him look like even more of a doofus. Passing the FISA bill was one of the excuses he’s been using for not taking up the Ukraine aid package.
This morning, Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan noted that MAGA Mike was just “a backbencher plucked from obscurity to be the third-highest-ranking official in the American government” and wrote “This is the most chaotic, inefficient and ineffective majority we’ve seen in decades covering Congress. It started this way under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and has gotten worse under Johnson… ‘Watching Speaker Johnson, who I have great respect for, grow up has been really fascinating. I just hope he has the time to finish growing up,’ said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK.), a 30-year veteran of the House… Some of the power centers in the House Republican Conference seem more eager to buck Johnson than help him. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), for example, has been yanked around on the rewrite of FISA, a top priority for the outspoken conservative. Many factions in Johnson’s conference feel the same way on other issues.
Yeah, it’s all a mess for MAGA Mike and his reaction to Tuesday night’s election loss in New York’s suburbs just made him look like he wants to keep his head buried in the sand— or up his ass, announcing at a sour grapes press gaggle that “The result last night is not something, in my view, that Democrats should celebrate too much.” After accusing Suozzi of running on a GOP-lite platform he said “There are a lot of factors there. That is in no way a bellwether of what’s going to happen this fall. We are absolutely convinced… NY-03 was what it was, but that has nothing to do on the efforts going forward.”
Frank Luntz had a very different— and less comfortable— perspective on what happened on Long Island:
No doubt it was another headache for MAGA Mike to see disgraced GOP ex-congressman George Santos texting former colleagues like Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nicole Malliotakis, Anthony D’Esposito, Brandon Williams, Marc Molinaro and Andrew Garbarino “I hope you guys are happy with this dismal performance and the 10 million dollars your futile Bull Shit cost the party. I look very much forward to seeing most of you lose due to your absolute hate filled campaign to remove me from Congress arbitrarily. Now go tell the Republicans Base what you fucking idiots did and good luck raising money next quarter.”
But what have stung worst for MM was the Politico Buyers’ Remorse story everyone was talking about yesterday. If Kevin McCarthy looked like a disaster for House Republicans just a few months ago, most of them would gladly give him another chance and not think twice about sending MM back to the back benches. Rachel Bade wrote that “Interviews with multiple Republicans over the last few days across multiple House factions— people who consider themselves on Johnson’s team, as well as those who were never enthusiastic about his rise— describe a speaker who seems to be winging it on major questions of strategy, messaging and basic vote-counting. Dismay over Johnson’s seemingly limp grasp on the speaker’s gavel has even produced a new trend of sorts: McCarthy nostalgia. ‘Kevin would have a strategy, he’d shop it around, then he’d make a play call,’ a senior Republican lawmaker said. ‘The more I’m around Johnson, the more it’s clear to me he doesn’t have a plan.’ Some are even going on the record. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a libertarian gadfly who was never considered a McCarthy ally, openly pined for the former speaker last week after Republicans suffered another embarrassing floor defeat. ‘Getting rid of Speaker McCarthy has officially turned into an unmitigated disaster,’ he tweeted.”
No doubt McCarthy imagines everyday how different things would have been if he had only hired an assassin to murder Matt Gaetz. In fact, McCarthy was on Capitol Hill Tuesday hosting a press conference where he “accused Gaetz of embellishing his closeness to Trump and lying about ‘who he sleeps with,’ apparently referring to accusations of sex trafficking against Gaetz— including soliciting sex from a minor.” Or maybe McCarthy was talking about Nestor, the Gaetz’s boy toy who he used to introduce as his son.
McCarthy’s allies on the Ethics Committee are moving along with their investigation of Gaetz’s sex crimes that McCarthy and his allies would hope will lead to Gaetz’s political demise. They’ve obtained the incriminating texts-- and at least one photograph-- that show that he brought an underage girl overseas for sex-for-pay.
