Mike Johnson promised a “well-oiled machine” the night he won the U.S. House speaker’s gavel. Four months later, he hasn’t delivered.
Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden is unraveling, Ukraine war aid languishes amid GOP opposition as Russia advances on the battlefield, and the U.S. government is on the brink of a politically damaging government shutdown.
“Over 100 days in, we’ve yet to fulfill and execute policy,” said Republican Patrick McHenry, who briefly served as a caretaker speaker last October after Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy.
Johnson, a novice in high-stakes Washington negotiations whose tiny House majority is riven with infighting, won the speakership in October after Republicans rejected several more seasoned candidates. At the time, Republicans heralded the election of the 52-year-old socially conservative Louisianan as a fresh start for the deeply fractured party.
Yet multiple senior House Republicans, granted anonymity to speak frankly, now portray Johnson as an insecure leader who faces a steep learning curve. Those GOP lawmakers complain Johnson keeps counsel mostly with an insular circle of his own staffers on even the most challenging matters — and that some senior colleagues are treated as objects of suspicion rather than allies.
They cite two back-to-back humiliating defeats in one early February evening, when the House not only rejected an Israel-only war aid package Johnson put up for a vote but also a marquee Republican impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Johnson went ahead despite warnings from other Republicans, one lawmaker said.
Johnson rallied his party the following week to impeach Mayorkas on a second try, prevailing by a single vote after Republican Steve Scalise returned from cancer treatment.
Tough Choices
But Johnson now confronts a series of much tougher choices next week that…
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