In an interview final week, NewsNation’s Blake Burman requested Speaker Mike Johnson about Marjorie Taylor Greene, and earlier than Burman may end his query, Johnson responded with traditional Southern scorn. “Bless her coronary heart,” he stated, after which he instructed Burman that Greene wasn’t proving to be a critical lawmaker and that he didn’t spend a whole lot of time fascinated by her.
Unusually sufficient, Johnson’s dismissal of Greene — on the eve of her potential effort to oust him from the workplace he received in October — spoke as loudly as his determination to place a vote for Ukraine help on the ground within the first place. Despite the Republican Get together’s slim majority within the Home and the fixed menace of a movement to vacate the chair, he won’t let MAGA’s most excessive lawmaker run the place.
To know the importance of this second, it’s crucial to grasp the altering tradition of the MAGAfied Republican Get together. After eight years of Donald Trump’s dominance, we all know the destiny of any Republican politician who instantly challenges him — the confrontation usually ends his or her political profession in essentially the most depressing method doable, with dissenters chased out of workplace amid a hail of threats and insults. Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney are however a number of of the numerous Republicans who dared to defy Trump and paid a excessive political worth.
However there’s an open query: Does the MAGA motion have the identical management over the Republican Get together when Trump isn’t instantly within the fray? Can it use the identical ways to impose celebration self-discipline and finish political careers? If the likes of Greene or Steve Bannon or Matt Gaetz or Charlie Kirk can wield the identical energy, then the transformation of the celebration will likely be full. It received’t be merely in thrall to Trump; will probably be in thrall to his imitators and heirs and maybe misplaced to the reactionary proper for a era or extra.
I don’t need to overstate the case, however Johnson’s stand — along with the Democrats’ response — offers me hope. Think about the chain of occasions. On April 12, Johnson appeared at Mar-a-Lago and acquired sufficient of a blessing from Trump to make it clear that Trump didn’t need him eliminated. Days earlier than a vote on Ukraine help that instantly defied the MAGA motion, Trump stated Johnson was doing a “excellent job.”
Days later, Johnson obtained help to Ukraine handed with extra Democratic votes than Republican — a violation of the so-called Hastert Rule, a casual follow that claims the speaker shouldn’t carry a vote until the measure is supported by a majority inside his personal celebration. Greene and the remainder of MAGA exploded, particularly when Democratic lawmakers waved Ukrainian flags on the Home flooring. Greene vowed to power a vote on her movement to finish Johnson’s speakership. She filed the movement in March as a “warning” to Johnson, and now she’s following by way of — instantly testing her means to remodel the Home.
However what occurred after the Ukraine vote was actually fascinating. First, Republicans who voted for Ukraine help discovered their precise constituents had been usually tremendous with the vote. Many supported Ukraine. There was little to no backlash again house.
Second, Democrats got here to Johnson’s help. Final Tuesday, the highest three Democrats within the Home — Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar — issued a press release supporting Johnson and opposing Greene’s movement to vacate. “If she invokes the movement,” they stated, “it won’t succeed.”
Subsequent, the Republican Get together’s human climate vane, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, blasted Greene in an interview with RealClearPolitics’s Phil Wegmann, telling him that “what’s she’s doing is actually unhelpful to the nation.” After all, Cruz will pivot on a dime if Trump activates Johnson, however in the mean time the facility dynamic is obvious, and MAGA with out Trump is far more bark than chunk.
In reality, in the event you take a step again and take a look at Biden’s time period thus far, one can see the outlines of wholesome authorities — no less than as long as Trump stays out of the fray. There’s a tough governing consensus on a lot of fronts. In 2021, for instance, Congress handed a bipartisan infrastructure invoice. In December 2022, it handed the Respect for Marriage Act, a bipartisan compromise invoice that protects each homosexual marriage and non secular liberty, and that very same month it handed bipartisan reforms to the Electoral Depend Act that can make it far more troublesome for a shedding candidate to sow chaos after a presidential election.
Mix these measures with the immensely essential overseas help package deal handed final month, and you may see the outlines of a functioning Congress, one wherein compromise and persuasion are nonetheless instruments of the commerce.
However that infuriates MAGA, which scorns compromise and persuasion as weak point. It derides bipartisan laws as a product of a corrupt Washington “uniparty.” And so Greene is pushing forward together with her movement to vacate. If Johnson survives the vote with Democratic help, she’ll label him the “Democrat speaker” and proceed her relentless political guerrilla warfare.
It has been 9 years since Trump got here down the escalator, and since that point MAGA has grow to be a motion that hopes to survive Trump himself. It’s systematically dismantling the outdated G.O.P. and trying to recreate the celebration in its personal picture. Nevertheless it has by no means been clear to me that MAGA can survive with out Trump, and Johnson’s battle with Greene tells us why.
To paraphrase Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s devastating takedown of Dan Quayle within the 1988 vice-presidential debate, we all know Donald Trump. He’s been a megawatt movie star for greater than 4 a long time. He constructed a whole model across the false notion that he was one of many world’s best businessmen. He has an uncanny means to achieve his core viewers. And also you, Consultant Greene, are not any Donald Trump.
Neither is the remainder of MAGA. The clown automotive assortment of MAGA personalities who orbit Trump is usually each profoundly bizarre and remarkably inept. They suffered a collective humiliation within the 2022 midterm elections. Mainstream Republicans coasted to victory in key elections in Georgia, Ohio and Florida, whereas the election-denying MAGA conspiracy theorists suffered a string of losses in battleground states.
The scandals and conspiracies that don’t appear to the touch Trump in any respect can nonetheless carry down different Republicans, together with the MAGA candidates who hug Trump the toughest. It seems that the vaunted ideological change of the Republican Get together from Reaganite conservatism to America First and working-class populism might be overblown.
This makes the 2024 election all of the extra essential. If Trump wins, MAGA has 4 extra years to consolidate its maintain on the Republican Get together and remodel the conservative motion from the within out. But when Trump loses, the battle is joined as soon as once more.
And if the mismatch between Speaker Johnson and Greene is any indication, I’d not presume that MAGA will win the day.
