Fight over Marjorie Taylor Greene’s threat to remove Mike Johnson heats up as Democrats promise rescue mission

The simmering debate over the fate of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) reached a boiling point Tuesday when top Democrats vowed to protect the GOP leader from a conservative takeover — and immediately took the House leader to coup to promise a vote to expel him from power.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has been awaiting her motion to kill the resolution for more than a month, said Democrats’ promised rescue mission was the last straw in a long list of grievances she has compiled against the president of the Chamber since then. he won the hammer in October. In a scathing statement, she accused Johnson of cutting “sticky” deals with Democrats, urged him to change parties and promised to force the full House to vote on his impeachment.

“If Democrats want to elect him president (and some Republicans want to support the Democrat’s chosen president), I will give them the chance to do so,” she posted. on social platform.

“I am a big believer in recorded votes because recording Congress allows all Americans to see the truth and provides transparency into our votes,” Greene continued. “Americans deserve to see Uniparty on full display. I’m about to throw them their coming out party!”

But Greene is keeping her cards close to her chest, refusing to say so far when she plans to force her resolution to the floor.

Greene refused to speak to reporters Tuesday as she entered the House chamber — “I have to go vote” — and then marched into the lawmaker’s office alongside Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a co- sponsor of the motion to vacate.

“The plans are still in development,” she told reporters as she left the Capitol.

The Georgia Republican has scheduled a press conference for 9 a.m. Wednesday, where she plans to detail her plan.

Greene’s fierce threat came less than an hour after the House’s three top Democrats — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Democratic Leader Katherine Clark (Mass.) and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar ( California) – issued a spontaneous statement announcing their intention to protect Johnson from Greene’s effort to remove the gavel. The plan is not to have Democrats vote directly on Johnson’s presidency, but to support a proposal to introduce Greene’s resolution — a procedural step that prevents it from reaching the floor.

“There’s a distinction there,” Aguilar told reporters.

The strategy wasn’t exactly a surprise: Several rank-and-file Democrats pledged to help Johnson stay in power if he secured passage of key legislation, including aid to Ukraine, and Democratic leaders said nothing publicly to discourage that unusual offer.

Still, the minority party’s move to keep a majority leader in power is unprecedented and highlights the extraordinary difficulties GOP leaders face as they try to manage their hard-line critics with a razor-thin majority and steer the legislation to President Biden’s desk.

Several Democrats said they simply wanted to reward Johnson for responsible governance and bring some stability to the volatile lower chamber.

“It would be wrong for Marjorie Taylor Greene to drag him into the gutter and drown him there,” said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.). “We will not allow that.”

Still, Democrats rarely agree with Johnson, a staunch conservative and devout evangelical. And those frictions increased in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when news broke that Johnson, a former constitutional lawyer, had devised the legal reasoning behind the Republican Party’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. .

Democrats discussed that history during a closed-door meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday morning, where party leaders announced their plan to help Johnson survive a riot.

“People talked about how he was the architect of the ‘Big Steal’ denial and the legal challenge that followed. So he didn’t come to this with clean hands,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.). “However, I think most members appreciate the fact that we are back in operational mode here and we are actually doing some things that are very, very important.”

Others were much more vocal in their criticism.

“He is dangerous, he is an election denier, he is a fundamentalist and he is not the leadership this country needs,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman (DN.Y.).

For many Democrats, however, rescuing Johnson is preferable to allowing Greene to shut down the House, as a different group of conservatives did in unseating former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in October.

“It’s not lost on me the role that Mike Johnson played in the lead-up to January 6th,” said Aguilar, who was part of the January 6th investigative committee. “However, we want to turn the page. We don’t want to go back in time and let Marjorie Taylor Greene dictate the schedule and the calendar of what’s to come.”

The prospect that Democrats would keep Johnson in power raised immediate questions about the impact on the House speaker’s standing at a GOP conference, where conservatives are already furious with him for reaching bipartisan deals on big-ticket legislation.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) said a Democratic rescue mission would only “intensify” Johnson’s image problem among many Republican voters, who might come to believe he doesn’t fight hard enough for conservative priorities. But the change would be “in degree,” he added, “not in kind.”

“Speaker Johnson, a person for whom I have warm feelings, has made a habit of passing legislation for Democrats. And he did it repeatedly,” Bishop said.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another frequent critic of the leadership, offered a similar assessment of the potential consequences.

“We’ve been passing bills with Democratic votes all year anyway,” Roy said. “I’m not sure what difference it makes.”

Johnson, for his part, dismissed concerns about serving as a Democratic-backed House speaker, describing his job as one of leading the entire House and not just the GOP conference.

“I’m a conservative Republican – a lifelong conservative Republican. That’s my philosophy, that’s my record, and we will continue to govern based on those principles,” Johnson said Tuesday.

“We shouldn’t be playing politics and getting involved in the chaos that looks like palace intrigue here.”

The Democratic statement opposing Johnson’s removal was just the latest blow to Greene’s effort to vacate the post, which has failed to gain traction among Republicans.

Several hard-line conservatives said that, with the election quickly approaching, they simply did not want to plunge the conference into a state of chaos.

“The feeling is, and I’m taking this view, that this is not the right time to do this,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.).

“Mike Johnson, saying all that, is a good man. He’s doing, in his mind, what he thinks is right,” Norman added. “Did he draw the red line with Biden? No. Did he accept the Schumer-Pelosi-McConnell bill? Yes. But it is what it is.”

Making matters worse for Greene, former President Trump — with whom Greene considers herself a close ally — sided with Johnson over the Georgia Republican.

“I stand with the speaker of the House, we had a very good relationship,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Johnson at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.

Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, spoke to Republicans during the closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday and delivered a message that Trump gave him the night before: Stay united.

“We can only win through unity,” Whatley told lawmakers of Trump’s message, according to a House Republican present at the meeting.

Declining support for Greene and her own hesitations led some to believe she was backtracking on her expulsion threat. Greene refused to force a vote on the impeachment of the House speaker after the House approved aid to Ukraine — which she vehemently opposed — and she skipped the votes on Monday, allowing her to avoid questions from reporters.

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of GOP leadership, said Monday, “I don’t think that’s going to happen.” And the House Republican who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic described Greene on Tuesday morning as having “cold feet.”

But the situation changed after top Democrats issued their statement, prompting Greene to promise to force a vote on the resolution.

Now, some Republicans are turning their fire on the GOP lawmaker — and at least one is accusing her of hypocrisy.

“Removing Mike Johnson would require Marjorie Taylor Greene to join the Democrats. So it’s kind of ironic for her to sit here on the one hand and criticize the one-party party and say, ‘Oh, the Democrats are going to save Mike Johnson,’” said Rep. Mike Lawler (RN.Y.). “She would need Democrats to remove Mike Johnson. So, frankly, it’s a bunch of nonsense what she’s talking about.”