Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to avoid a government shutdown by relying on Democratic votes will not cost him the gavel, despite it being the exact same strategy that got Kevin McCarthy the boot, according to interviews with over a dozen members from across the House Republican Conference.
But while the Louisiana Republican has largely avoided a right-wing rebellion, his move has still triggered serious grumbling from conservatives, delivering an early warning sign for the new speaker as he tries to unite his bitterly divided conference behind him in the crucial months ahead.
At this point, conservative hardliners – including the eight who voted to remove McCarthy – say there’s no desire to punish Johnson over his stopgap funding plan and told CNN there haven’t been any private conversations about making a “motion to vacate” the speaker’s chair, which is the tool that was used to oust McCarthy.
The reason they’re willing to give Johnson a pass: They say he has only been on the job for three weeks, whereas McCarthy had nine months to figure out a government funding plan before he ultimately put a clean stopgap bill on the floor with the support of Democrats. Conservatives also say Johnson, who was a rank-and-file member up until this point, hasn’t broken their trust yet.
“It’s like throwing in a quarterback in the fourth quarter and expecting him to make up for three quarters of failure and you’re behind 35-0,” said Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, one of the eight Republicans who voted out McCarthy and voted against Johnson’s government funding bill.
But there’s also zero appetite among Republicans to plunge the House into chaos again, with the tumultuous, three-week speaker’s battle fresh on members’ minds and emotions still running high inside the GOP conference.
“I think when you touch a hot stove once, you don’t do it…
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