Why Marjorie Taylor Greene may fail where Matt Gaetz succeeded
By Michael Jones
Kevin McCarthy’s dreams of becoming House Speaker were first dashed in 2015 when the far-right House Freedom Caucus refused to support his candidacy, forcing him to withdraw his name from consideration.
Once former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) retired in 2019, McCarthy spent the next several years as minority leader galvanizing support from conservative members and former President Donald Trump ahead of another run at the speakership last January.
This outreach included Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican firebrand who under the speakership of Nancy Pelosi was stripped of her assignments to the Budget Committee and Education and Labor Committee in February 2021 due to incendiary comments she made prior to her election to Congress.
Greene sat in the camera frame at a September 2022 event in Pennsylvania where McCarthy rolled out the House GOP’s policy agenda if they flipped the House, which they ultimately did less than two months later. McCarthy promised Greene would receive plum committee assignments under his leadership and that she would no longer be relegated to the fringe of the House Republican Conference. She would become one of its faces.
Greene would go on to support McCarthy’s election—even posing for a selfie with the embattled top House Republican on the floor ahead of his election after an unprecedented 15 ballots. And as a member of the Oversight and Homeland Security Committees, she led the push to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and investigate Joe Biden for impeachment.
As you know, McCarthy was removed as speaker last fall after his arch-nemesis Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) filed a successful motion to vacate the chair. And although she voted against his dismissal, Greene filed her own motion to vacate McCarthy’s successor Mike Johnson before Congress left Washington for Easter recess in protest of his decision to put two six-bill funding packages—known inside the Beltway as “minibuses”—on the floor to prevent a government shutdown. (Greene and other conservatives opposed the measures because, in their opinion, the bills lacked any meaningful far-right policy wins.)
Greene can demand a vote within 48 hours at a time of her choosing and claims the motion isn’t symbolic but a procedural step towards replacing Johnson. Meanwhile, Johnson has projected confidence that he’ll remain on the job and called Greene a friend with whom he looked forward to speaking before the House returns to Washington next week. But Greene has remained defiant, going as far as to compare Johnson, who opposes abortion, homosexuality, and green energy, to former Speaker Pelosi. All of this is occurring as our fragile democratic institutions hang in the balance.
Johnson may end up facing McCarthy’s fate—especially if former President Donald Trump comes out against the speaker—but while it was pretty clear McCarthy’s days were numbered when Gaetz made his move, it’s not a foregone conclusion for three key reasons.
First, Speaker Johnson has fewer personal enemies.
Kevin McCarthy was distrusted by members of the far right for reneging on handshake agreements he made to earn their votes for the top gavel, not fighting hard enough from their perspective for conservative policy priorities, and his willingness to shift his ideology with the political winds in service of his political ambitions instead of the broader success of the conference.
The animosity wasn’t limited to House Republicans though.
After House Democrats provided more than 60 percent late last September to avoid the first of five government shutdown threats, McCarthy went on one of the Sunday Morning talk shows and accused Democrats of playing politics.
“I wasn’t sure it was gonna pass,” McCarthy said on CBS’s Face the Nation the morning after 90 of his members voted against the short-term funding extension to keep the government open. “You want to know why? Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let us pass.”
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) told a group of reporters that had McCarthy conducted himself differently that weekend, Democrats may not have been so unified against his ouster.
“He goes on TV and says the Democrats rejected it. And you knew it wasn’t a mistake because [House Republican Conference Chair Elise] Stefanik [(R-N.Y.)] was on another station saying the same thing,” Ivey said.
While Johnson’s members may dislike some of his leadership decisions, they don’t harbor as much personal animosity towards him, which may be enough goodwill to prevent the mutiny that engulfed McCarthy. Republicans also say Johnson inherited the mess McCarthy left behind and have extended the current speaker a level of grace McCarthy never received.
Enough Democrats may be inclined to skip a floor on the motion to vacate or vote present to save Johnson if he puts bills that fund Ukraine aid or the repair of the recently collapsed Baltimore bridge on the House floor. But preservation at the hands of the opposing party could open up another line of attack from the conservative movement.
Second, Republicans realize their issues are structural.
The current House rules package prevents Johnson from bringing most bills to the floor through regular order, which means he needs Democratic votes to pass any significant legislation.
Additionally, the cloud of a motion to vacate will hover over whoever is in the speaker’s suite, which makes it virtually impossible to govern without the threat of losing your job.
And as I’ve written before, House Republicans barely control one-half of one branch of the federal government: Their political demands are misaligned with the legislative math.
Let’s say Greene is successful in whipping the votes required to fire Johnson, the next speaker will have the same razor-thin majority and a conference full of folks who can’t stand each other or galvanize around a cohesive policy agenda.
Finally, there’s the legislative calendar.
There are about 15 legislative weeks before Election Day and there’s little indication that members want to deal with another several weeks of floor inaction to find another speaker so close to when voters will head to the polls to determine the balance of power for the next two years.
And though there’s never really an ideal occasion to boot the speaker, the timing of Greene’s motion comes as the House has yet to pass urgently needed Ukraine aid and Congress must authorize legislation for federal aviation programs,
Lawmakers find themselves at the start of a new appropriations process weeks after they completed the previous one six months late. And I haven’t even mentioned we’re seven months away from the general election and Congress will be away from Washington all of August and October.
Regardless of the House GOP member-on-member antics, Democratic leaders say their members will remain focused on fighting for their policy priorities and following the marching orders of their leader, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“Our caucus believes in government. Ultimately, we all wake up and we come here wanting to make people’s lives better, wanting to get to support pieces of legislation to improve people’s lives. That’s what the Democratic Caucus does,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar told reporters last month. “It’s not lost on me that his title may not be Speaker of the House, but definitely Leader of the Democratic Caucus and probably Leader of the Congress is Hakeem Jeffries: He has the votes. He has the confidence of a significant portion of members. Because ours is a group that believes in governing.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
