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Now that several House Republicans have resigned or been removed from office, Speaker Mike Johnson will soon be down to a one-vote majority.
Since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives after the 2022 elections, internal GOP dynamics have followed a familiar pattern. First, a Speaker of the House is elected by making lavish promises and concessions to right-wing extremists like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Second, whenever some routine budget business must be passed, the same handful of extremists make insane demands that are utterly unacceptable to either Senate Democrats or President Biden. Third, the Speaker cuts a deal with House Democrats that largely preserves the status quo. Fourth, the extremists try to kick out their own Speaker using a “motion to vacate,” which thanks to the aforementioned concessions, now only requires a single member to propose.
This is what happened to Kevin McCarthy, and now Greene is threatening to do it to his replacement Mike Johnson. And now that several House Republicans have resigned or been removed from office, Johnson will soon be down to a one-vote majority.
But this time, House Democrats are considering bailing out Johnson, if he will agree to put an aid package for Ukraine that has already passed the Senate on the House floor. “If the choice is between Ukraine aid and providing a vote to stop a motion to vacate, or no Ukraine aid, I think there’s a lot of Democrats who would be willing to assist in getting it done,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told The Hill.
The reason Democrats are so anxious to get this aid passed is that the tactical situation on the ground in Ukraine is dire. Since Greene and her fellow Putin stooges have bottled up this package for months, Ukrainian troops have run desperately short of artillery shells, the most critical munition in the conflict. Today, Russia is out-shelling Ukraine by a factor of perhaps 4 to 1, and as a result, has made some progress pushing through Ukrainian defenses.
It should also be emphasized that the only reason Ukraine is not a Gaza-style humanitarian catastrophe from one end to the other is that the Ukrainian military has not been defeated in the field. We have seen what happens in areas conquered by the Russian military, like Mariupol—utter physical devastation from saturation artillery bombardment, torture, murder, and mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children. The stakes are very high.
If Democrats could get a clean Ukraine aid bill on the House floor, it would almost certainly pass. Heck, probably a majority of Republicans would vote for it. The question is whether it’s worth the trade.
On the one hand, Johnson is a hard-right extremist himself whose politics are largely similar to Greene’s. It would be foolish, as some liberals suggested when Kevin McCarthy was facing his removal vote, to support him as a show of being the adults in the room. There is no reason to help Republicans deal with the dysfunction created by their own irresponsible stupidity out of some sense of civic virtue.
On the other hand, keeping Johnson in place in return for concessions would be a different matter. As noted, Ukraine does need this aid very badly. And it’s not as if whoever replaces Johnson would be any better—at best his replacement would be similar, at worst a complete maniac. Indeed, with such a microscopic majority, Republicans might not be able to agree on anyone at all. Johnson at least has demonstrated he will cut some grudging deals with Democrats at the last minute.
House Democrats are reportedly deferring to their leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who hasn’t come out one way or another yet. But if this deal were on the table, I’d take it.
