Johnson Survives Greene’s Ouster Attempt as
Democrats Join G.O.P. to Kill It
Republicans and Democrats banded together to block a
motion by the right-wing Georgia congresswoman to remove the speaker.
Catie
Edmondson Carl Hulse Kayla Guo
By Catie
Edmondson, Carl Hulse and Kayla Guo
Reporting
from Capitol Hill
May 8, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/us/politics/greene-johnson-vacate.html
Speaker
Mike Johnson on Wednesday easily batted down an attempt by Representative
Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to oust him from his post, after Democrats
linked arms with most Republicans to fend off a second attempt by G.O.P.
hard-liners to strip the gavel from their party leader.
The vote to
kill the effort was an overwhelming 359 to 43, with seven voting “present.”
Democrats flocked to Mr. Johnson’s rescue, with all but 39 of them voting with
Republicans to block the effort to oust him.
Members of
the minority party in the House have never propped up the other party’s
speaker, and when the last Republican to hold the post, Kevin McCarthy, faced a
removal vote last fall, Democrats voted en masse to allow the motion to move
forward and then to jettison him, helping lead to his historic ouster.
This time,
the Democratic support made the critical difference, allowing Mr. Johnson, who
has a minuscule majority, to avoid a removal vote altogether. While for weeks
Ms. Greene had appeared to be on a political island in her drive to get rid of
yet another G.O.P. speaker, 11 Republicans ultimately voted to allow her motion
to move forward.
That was
the same number of Republicans who voted in October to allow the bid to remove
Mr. McCarthy to advance — but back then, they were joined by every Democrat.
“I
appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided
effort,” Mr. Johnson told reporters shortly after Wednesday’s vote. “As I’ve
said from the beginning and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my
job. I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was
elected to do, and I’ll let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is
leadership.”
“Hopefully,”
he added, “this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous
character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress.”
The
lopsided vote solidified the dynamic that has defined Mr. Johnson’s
speakership, like Mr. McCarthy’s before him: Each time the Republican leader
has been faced with a critical task, such as averting a government shutdown or
a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt, he has relied on a bipartisan
coalition of mainstream lawmakers to steer around far-right opposition and
provide the votes to accomplish it.
The result
has been the empowerment of Democrats at the expense of the hard right, the
very phenomenon that Ms. Greene raged against as she rose on the House floor on
Wednesday — drawing boos from some of her colleagues — to lay out a scathing
case against Mr. Johnson and what she called the “uniparty” he empowered.
“Our
decision to stop Marjorie Taylor Greene from plunging the House of
Representatives and the country into further chaos is rooted in our commitment
to solve problems for everyday Americans in a bipartisan manner,”
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, told
reporters shortly after the vote. “We will continue to govern in a reasonable,
responsible and results-oriented fashion, and put people over politics all day
and every day.”
Ms.
Greene’s move to oust Mr. Johnson came roughly three weeks after the speaker
pushed through a long-stalled $95 billion national security spending package to
aid Israel, Ukraine and other American allies over the objections of Ms. Greene
and other right-wing Republicans who staunchly opposed sending additional aid
to Kyiv.
Lawmakers
loudly jeered Ms. Greene as she called up the resolution and read it aloud. As
she recited the measure, a screed that lasted more than 10 minutes, Republicans
lined up on the House floor to shake Mr. Johnson’s hand and pat him on the
back.
“Given a
choice between advancing Republican priorities or allying with Democrats to
preserve his own personal power, Johnson regularly chooses to ally himself with
Democrats,” Ms. Greene said, reading from her resolution.
She
concluded with the official call for his removal: “Now, therefore be it
resolved that the office of the speaker of the House of Representatives is
hereby declared to be vacant.”
It marked
the second time in less than a year that Republicans have sought to depose
their own speaker, coming about seven months after G.O.P. rebels succeeded,
with Democratic support, in removing Mr. McCarthy.
Earlier in
the week, Ms. Greene had seemed to hesitate over whether she would actually
call the ouster vote. For two consecutive days, she met for hours with Mr.
Johnson, flanked by her chief ally, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky,
and floated a list of demands in exchange for not calling the vote.
Among the
demands were cutting off all future U.S. aid to Ukraine, defunding the Justice
Department and imposing a 1 percent across the board cut on all spending bills
if lawmakers are unable to negotiate a deal to fund the government in
September.
But Mr.
Johnson had remained cool to their entreaties, and told reporters that he was
not negotiating with Ms. Greene and Mr. Massie.
That put
Ms. Greene, whose combative political brand is premised on her unrelenting
appetite to fight with the establishment of her party, out on a limb. She had
little choice but to call up a vote she knew would fail, but had been
threatening for weeks. Even after Mr. Jeffries made it clear that Democrats
would vote to block any ouster attempt, she was still determined to undermine
Mr. Johnson publicly and force Democrats to bail him out.
“This is
exactly what the American people needed to see,” she told reporters on the
House steps after the vote. “I didn’t run for Congress to come up here and join
the uniparty, and the uniparty was on full display today.”
“The
Democrats now control Speaker Johnson,” she added.
Just 32 Democrats voted to allow Ms. Greene’s motion
to move forward, while another seven voted “present,” registering no position.
Ms. Greene
initially filed the motion against Mr. Johnson in late March, just as lawmakers
were voting on a $1.2 trillion spending bill he pushed through the House over
the opposition of the majority of Republicans. She called the move a “betrayal”
and said she wanted to send the speaker a “warning,” then left the threat
dangling for weeks.
Mr. Johnson
plowed ahead anyway, putting together an aid package for Ukraine — a move Ms.
Greene previously said was a red line that would prompt her to seek his ouster,
but which did not lead her to immediately make good on her threat.
“I’m
actually going to let my colleagues go home and hear from their constituents,”
Ms. Greene said following the vote, predicting that Republicans would join her
bid to get rid of Mr. Johnson after getting an earful from voters irate about
the foreign aid bill. Instead, many of them heard just the opposite and
returned to Washington voicing skepticism about removing Mr. Johnson.
If she had
been successful on Wednesday, Ms. Greene would have prompted only the second
vote on the House floor in more than 100 years on whether to oust the speaker.
When Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida instigated Mr. McCarthy’s removal in
October, such a spectacle had not been seen in the chamber since 1910.
But this
time, Ms. Greene had a more difficult time finding support for removing the
speaker. House Republicans were wary of throwing the chamber into another
period of chaos like the one that paralyzed the House for weeks after Mr.
McCarthy’s ouster, and have privately seethed about the public disarray Ms.
Greene’s threat has sown.
Even
ultraconservatives like Mr. Gaetz expressed uneasiness with firing another
speaker, suggesting that the move risked handing over control of the House to
Democrats given Republicans’ rapidly narrowing margin of control.
Former
President Donald J. Trump also came to Mr. Johnson’s defense, urging
Republicans on social media minutes after the vote to kill Ms. Greene’s effort,
arguing that polling showed Republicans doing well in the November elections,
and that a show of division would undermine the party.
“If we show
DISUNITY, which will be portrayed as CHAOS, it will negatively affect
everything!” he wrote.
He called
Mr. Johnson “a good man who is trying very hard,” but did not slam the door
altogether on the idea of removing him.
“We’re not
in a position” to do so now, with such a small Republican majority in the
House, Mr. Trump wrote. “At some point, we may very well be, but this is not
the time.”
Catie
Edmondson covers Congress for The Times. More about Catie Edmondson
Carl Hulse
is the chief Washington correspondent, primarily writing about Congress and
national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience
reporting in the nation’s capital. More about Carl Hulse
Kayla Guo
covers Congress for The New York Times as the 2023-24 reporting fellow based in
Washington. More about Kayla Guo
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário