UPDATED 10/25:
Republicans today chose inexperienced 4th-term member of Congress Mike Johnson of Louisiana to be the next House Speaker. Johnson is notoriously anti-environmentalist and as hard-core anti-abortion as they come. But he comes with former President Trump’s seal of approval — the lack of which doomed the previous nominee, moderate Tom Emmer — and that’s what made the difference.
Johnson has promised to have budget bills passed within a week — early enough to avoid a government shutdown — which ironically is BAD news.
Without a continuing resolution (which is considered heresy) there won’t be time for a thoughtful, deliberative, and collaborative process — collaborative either with House Democrats OR the Senate OR the White House. There will just be time to create a Republican wish list and send it to the Senate. And THAT will be taken by much of the public to fully discharge Republican responsibility for the upcoming government shutdown!
And yes, there will still be one. The proposed budget will — by design! — be a policy disaster. Democrats will not and should not capitulate to it. The Senate, probably working too slowly to meet the deadline, will call for a continuing resolution. Johnson can be nice for a short extension or two, just to seem reasonable, but will then (likely at a time calculated to suck the oxygen from a Trump legal disaster) tell them to capitulate or own the shutdown. This is a lose-lose proposition for them.
They presumably won’t give in. That’s fine with the House Republicans and Trump, whose main concern is with assigning blame: they will call this the “DEMOCRAT SHUTDOWN.” Well-reasoned editorials and peppery Democratic YouTube videos will rightly rebut this on the merits, but that won’t matter: remember, instilling a slogan and mini-thought into the public’s mind is the main thing that Republicans are good at!
For Trumpublicans, this is a triple win: (1) they get the shutdown that will wreck the economy and likely doom Biden, (2) they get to blame Democrats for it rather than owning it themselves, and (3) they will end up getting a far better budget than they would have otherwise because eventually Democrats will have to crumble rather than seeing their baby (the economy) cut in half. There’s a term in the study of negotiation called BATNA — that stands for “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement” — and because Trumpublicans have wanted a shutdown (again, see my argument in the initial piece below), Democrats rightly abhor the prospect. So Trumpublicans have a very good BATNA and Democrats have a very bad one.
Democrats should have negotiated with that in mind. They really needed ONLY TWO THINGS from a Republican Speaker, as explained in the original piece. They could likely have gotten them if they had kept their demands limited, given their weaker negotiating position. But no — they strutted forward and demanded entirely reasonable (but not likely attainable) conditions like “live up to the to the agreement you made to end the debt ceiling crisis!” (which was made at a moment when the Republican BATNA was much worse), leaving them vulnerable to just this sort of prospect. (I had expected it to be Byron Donalds, but Johnson works as well.)
in some ways, the saddest thing is that Democrats might have evaded this even today! They could have nominated not prideful and doomed Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, but — Tom Emmer, the actual moderate Republican that Trump had just spiked, mostly because he was one of the few who voted to certify the 2020 election. They could have worked with him to actually govern. (As noted before, they also could have allowed McCarthy or Scalise to win, simply by abstaining.)
But alas, that is not the Democratic way. The Democratic way is to stand fast on principles — never support a Republican! — and thereby to lose suddenly, unexpectedly, and massively on substance. Again, this was not unpredictable: it was predicted below.
[Original post from 10/15 follows:]
As I predicted on October 3, Dems are being blamed by Republicans for the House remaining without a Speaker. Kevin McCarthy himself said that they should have given him enough votes (or abstentions) for him to win — although he admits that he was not willing to offer them anything to win over their votes.
He’s being stupid — but he’s not entirely wrong. As House Democrats are in the process of doing the same damn thing again — already failing to rally to save Steve Scalise’s bid over the Sign of the Apocalypse, Indicted Former President Trump’s choice, Jim Jordan. So let’s review ONCE AGAIN what Democrats’ core interests are here:
- They have to ensure that the debt ceiling is raised so that the government does not default
- They have to ensure that the government does not shut down, at least for an extended time, which means either passing new budgets or a “continuing resolution” to keep the existing budget allocations in force
And that’s it! Yes, there are many other things that Dems would like to do — I consider aid to Ukraine to be a huge priority, for example — but there are only these two that they must do.
To make them happen, they need to have a Speaker — and that Speaker needs to be one who will agree to join with them to prevent either from happening.
Steve Scalise — especially if he were elected with Democratic votes — might be that Speaker. That would take some negotiation to determine, but I feel confident that all Dems plus a small basket of Republicans would have been able to elect him.
To be clear: I don’t say that this is a core Democratic interest because it is for the good of the country — although it is. I say that it’s a core Democratic interest because either of the above catastrophes would crash the national economy at a critical time. And, as I said in my previous piece, such an economic collapse here would likely lead to a worldwide economic disaster — one that would leave the Biden Administration flailing (or at least appearing to flail to a public goosed on by the right-wing noise machine), and having to make all sorts of difficult and unpopular decisions. Some of these, to stabilize the worldwide economy, would necessarily go against parochial and xenophobic interests. (They would likely also reignite inflation, playing into MAGA Republican hands.)
The consequence is that the public would blame the sitting President, as it usually does. That’s what Trump is thinking. And in case you think that I’m just trying to read Trump’s mind here, I’m not. I’m reading his words, helpfully from his Truth Social account helpfully gathered by The Weekly Sift’s Doug Muder in a truly incisive and insightful post:
@realDonaldTrump
The Republicans lost big on Debt Ceiling, got NOTHING, and now are worried that they will be BLAMED for the Budget Shutdown. Wrong!!! Whoever is President will be blamed, in this case, Crooked (as Hell!) Joe Biden! Our Country is being systematically destroyed by the Radical Left Marxists, Fascists and Thugs – THE DEMOCRATS. UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN! Close the Border, stop the Weaponization of “Justice,” and End Election Interference – WE MUST HAVE HONEST ELECTIONS. It’s time Republicans learned how to fight! Are you listening Mitch McConnell, the weakest, dumbest, and most conflicted “Leader” in U.S. Senate history? HE’S ALREADY GIVEN THE DEMOCRATS EVERYTHING, THEY CAN’T BELIEVE HOW LUCKY THEY GOT. WE NEED NEW, & REAL, REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, NOT A CLONE OF MITCH, & WE NEED IT NOW!!!
Jim Jordan, the guy credibly accused blocking investigation of sexual molestation scandal with the Ohio State Wrestling Team back when he was an Assistant Coach there, is probably the one politician whom Trump can entirely trust. I suspect that if Trump somehow can’t run for President in 2024, he will take all of his delegates and direct them to vote for Jim Jordan, who will pardon them and muscle New York and Georgia into doing the same. (Either way, I expect him to run, with Trump’s endorsement, in 2028.)
But dealing with Jim Jordan ’28 can wait until MAGA goes the way of the Tea Party. Right now we need to deal with Trump ’24.
What Democrats want is a grand bargain in which the most moderate Republicans — YOUNG KIM, INCOMING CALL ON LINE 2! — would solve the problem by electing their leader Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker. And this is not going to happen.
What could happen is a deal to make a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus — which I thought was still led by Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska but is apparently now led by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania — to be Speaker, at which point a continuing resolution can be passed to keep the current budget in place until October 1, 2024 unless superseded by new budget bills.
That would work. I don’t mind Dems proving to everyone that Jeffries can’t win by trying out their plan on the first ballot, but by the second ballot Democrats have three achievable choices available:
- End up with Jim Jordan
- Fail to Elect a New Speaker and reap the whirlwind
- Elect a Reasonable Speaker who doesn’t want to crash the economy
Electing Hakeem Jeffries is not on the list. Furthermore, unlike would they could have done with McCarthy and probably could have arranged with Scalise, this will require Democrats to actively vote for a Republican in order to avoid economic calamity and a probable Trump reinstallation as President.
Are they smart enough to do the smart thing — the only smart thing left available to them, with the world economy and the preservation of our democracy on the line?
Apparently not. They are willing to support a power-saving arrangement of (some sort) with a new Republican speaker, but they also want to make an entirely reasonable demand — not being sarcastic here! — that is also a deal killer: to hold the Republicans to the agreements entered into with Kevin McCarthy at the time that they avoided the credit default earlier this year in the debt limit crisis.
I have not refreshed my memory regarding the details of that bill, but I am confident that Jeffries is telling the truth about that because — as with the Sherlock Holmes story in which the clue is that the dog does not bark at a supposed intruder — Republicans are not pillorying Jeffries over his making such a claim. (See how off their game they are?)
The solution is, again, to make a new deal: the default if there is no budget agreement is to keep the present budget allocations in place until, oh, April 1, 2015. (That’s because it’s the start of the fiscal quarter, not because of April Fool’s Day.) Then, they become the party that can stand by if and enjoy themselves if the parties don’t come to a meeting of the minds — and their price of a new budget can then be reinstating the agreement made with McCarthy.
And, um, next time Dems have a chance to elect a Speaker who doesn’t want to crash the economy and wreck democracy, even if he once described himself with respect to a former elected official from the district he represents as “David Duke without the baggage” — a phrase in which “the baggage” means Duke’s deplorable racism and vitriol, as opposed to the otherwise fairly mainstream (among the highly conservative) reprehensible but not unusual economic policies — TAKE IT! Don’t do Trump’s work for him!
Note that this was first posted on 10/15. I’ve updated it with what could have been its own blog post today, after the installation of Rep. Mike Johnson as Speaker, because the analysis and predictions made in the original story are critical to understanding the update. (Shorter version: Dems, not realizing the weakness of their position, have been out-maneuvered again. It was not only predictable, but predicted.)
I just watched Mike Johnson’s speech upon assuming the Speakership. He is folksy, eloquent, engaging, and outwardly cooperative. So that is good — and it reinforces what I’ve written above. If he rises to the challenge of serving the entire House, that will be great. But in that case Democrats will have been lucky rather than smart.
He seems seriously and sincerely religious. That can be both good and bad. He’s a complete believer in American goodness and in supporting Israel. He talks about the border and fentanyl. He argues for reining in spending and debt. (No mention of raising taxes, but of a bipartisan debt commission.)
He says that compromise is important, but not on core principles. Then he defines core principles as involving most Republican goals.
He promises decentralized governance of the House.
Honestly, he’s one of the best political speakers — in terms of style and clarity, not substantive content — that I’ve heard on the national level in years. Natural and conversational. He highlights just how bad most Presidential candidates as Congressional leaders are. Putting aside my disagreement with his content, I’m impressed with his style and countenance.
Maybe he’ll be wise enough not to press forward with the achievable scenario I put forth above. That really would be dodging a bullet.
Uh oh – I’ve just received word though that Miss Info Asperger, inspired by Johnson’s creativity in denying the 2020 election and accusing Pelosi of a felony for ripping up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union Address on TV, is preparing a presentation of what SHE believes to be the facts of Johnson’s life.
Any election denier who isn’t crazy is a coward and afraid of his/her own constituents.
Forgot to explicitly say that he’s not an “election denier” as the term is usually used. He did vote against certification for the reasons I’ve noted, but without the power to actually cause a contingent election that seems like a protest vote, cast in part to highlight the difference between lawful and unlawful protest of the result. He knew that certification wasn’t going to fail.
As for Miss info: you know how I feel about her…
He was actively against the violence and the unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. He’s a bona fide constitutional lawyer;,though he used his talents for social conservative ends that I find noxious, he’s not some lightweight wrestling coach or a “burn everything to the ground” freak. His “pivotal role,” as the NYT put it, in the 2030 election was to argue against certification of the election NOT on the basis of some cooked up quarter-baked assertion of fraud, but because various efforts to ensure voter access during the first year of Covid were adopted too late to use and/or by the wrong people (e.g., state executives rather than legislators.) I disagree with his legal conclusions, but they were ones that it took some serious amount of research to reject. And they are FAR more worthy of respect than the swill vomited up by Lumpy Pillow Guy or the move to credit the votes of fraudulent electors. They’re just “normal-level wrong.”
As I say in the story, I wish that Dems would have snapped up Scalise while they could or just nominated Emmer themselves today. But while Johnson will be maddening when he goes after abortion, LGBT rights, etc., he does NOT seem to be a suicide bomber trying to wreck the world economy for political gain. That, sadly, puts him in the upper half of candidates we’ve seen for Speaker.
Nice job, Greg.
Well, I’m prepared to slam him hard if he doesn’t cooperate on budget and debt issues. My trying to be fair to him when his prior acts have been exaggerated is very much grading on a curve of potential Republican Speakers. I wish we had Scalise.
The Rude Pundit, who grew up in Mike Johnson’s Louisiana, posts “Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Hates Nearly All of Us” and I quote:
Liquor laws in Louisiana are a clusterfuck. Because of a state supreme court decision decades ago, they are subject to the whims of a community vote whenever someone can get it on the ballot. So a town can allow alcohol sales in, say, restaurants for a while and then, whenever some opportunistic Christian dickflea gets enough people itching, they can vote to overturn the law and go back to being a dry town or county. Or, you know, parish, as they call counties in the state because Catholicism.
The decent-sized, if generally shitty, town of Minden in the generally shitty Webster Parish was dry in 2003. Minden is 30 miles from Shreveport, which is a decent-sized, if generally shitty, city. The economy of Minden was not doing great 20 years ago, so a group of business owners, with the support of the Chamber of Commerce, wanted to have another vote on allowing alcohol sales in restaurants, hoping that it would attract some chains to town or at least provide a new tax revenue stream. Minden had been dry since a vote in 1974, but after a contentious city council meeting in August 2003, it was decided that the restaurant alcohol sales law would be decided in a special election just a couple of months later.
The people against allowing alcohol sales were straight out of a 1980s movie about tight-ass evangelicals refusing to allow anyone to have fun. Their warnings were like the lyrics of The Music Man song “Ya Got Trouble.” According to one local columnist, “They expanded from simply claiming this was a back-door way to bring about bars and package sales to more extreme connections. They alleged this was an ‘end-around’ to bring sexually oriented businesses, such as strip clubs to Minden. They also pointed out it could be an attempt to bring legalized gambling into Minden.” Churches went into overdrive, with prayer services just to try to get their invisible sky wizard to intervene. They even had round-the-clock prayers just before the election date.
The anti-fun forces, led by five plaintiffs, tried to sue to stop the election, but they filed their lawsuit too late for it to be heard. Their lawyer was a Shreveport attorney who was making a name for himself as a supporter of nutzoid right-wing Christian causes. And since you read the title of this piece, you already know that it was Mike Johnson, who is now Speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency. That’s right. Two decades ago, he was trying to stop alcohol sales in a town.
The voting occurred that November and over half the registered voters went out to the polls. That’s how much this meant in an off-year election. And, Lord have mercy, they voted 57-43% in favor of alcohol sales in restaurants in Minden. Johnson’s clients considered another lawsuit to question the elections results, but they decided against it, and Minden restaurants and now bars and, yes, casinos can serve alcohol. The nearest strip joint is still about 15 miles away, in the next parish over.
For years, Mike Johnson represented the shittiest fucking people in trying to halt others from having rights or enjoying life in a way that harmed no one. As a dick lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom (motto: “‘Freedom’ should probably be in quotation marks in our name”), Johnson was on the fucked up side of issue after issue in our bullshit culture war. He fought the city of New Orleans to stop it from offering domestic partnership benefits in the pre-Obergefell days. The law had been in place since 1999, and they sued in 2003 in a case they lost in 2005. He opposed the Obama abortion pill mandate, he sued in favor of various school prayer cases, and more. When it comes to abortion and LGBTQ rights, Johnson is the hardest of the hardcore opposing both. And when he was a state representative, in the panicked days before the Obergefell same-sex marriage decision in 2015, Johnson sponsored legislation that would allow businesses to refuse to serve same-sex couples and, going back to his earlier case, would allow a business to deny benefits to same-sex couples because of “religious” reasons.
And perhaps it’s here that we need to pause for a moment and say that Mike Johnson loves God. His version of God, I mean, since, you know, God is made up. But he fuckin’ loves God as intensely and loudly as a newly-out Omaha lesbian loves pussy. He leans Christian dominionist, which is as weird and insidious as it sounds. He says that the United States is a “biblical republic,” whatever the fuck that means. He told Sean Hannity, “Someone asked me today in the media, they said people are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? I said, Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview, that’s what I believe.” I wonder if that includes all the rules in Leviticus, but I don’t want to ask about beard-shaving regimen…
more here… https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2023/10/speaker-of-house-mike-johnson-hates.html
We coulda had Scalise — and we fumbled it.