Mike Johnson adds an interesting twist to the familiar government shutdown plotline

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Is this deja vu or something new?

The broad outlines of the government spending fight as it stands in November are the same as they were in October.

►A deadline looms. Funding expires after Friday, November 17, and lawmakers do not have a definitive plan to pass a stopgap government funding bill.

►The House speaker is suggesting a temporary fix. But he is not insisting on spending cuts in this particular stopgap bill.

►Republicans are split, again. A faction of right-wing Republicans already opposes the direction their leaders are heading. Read more from CNN’s Lauren Fox.

►Democrats will be needed to make a majority. Averting a partial government shutdown will again require the votes of Democrats voting with Republicans.

But while a similar brew of factors cost former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy his job a little more than a month ago, there are some important differences that mean McCarthy’s replacement, Mike Johnson, may be on course to avoid a partial government shutdown with relatively little drama, at least for now.

The first is that Johnson, not McCarthy, is doing the negotiating. Still relatively unknown outside of Capitol Hill, Johnson appears to have enough credibility with the right-wing of the party. Anti-spending lawmakers are publicly opposing his approach but not currently threatening his position.

The second important detail is that Johnson has proposed a twist, which he’s calling the “laddered approach.”

Rather than a single bill for all government funding, he is suggesting a two-pronged approach that would fund some of the government – military construction, Veterans Affairs, transportation, housing and the Energy Department – until January…