Thursday morning’s edition of Politico Playbook concludes that Speaker Mike Johnson just might be kind of completely fucked given the untenable situation on Ukraine funding he faces with white nationalist QAnon psychopath Marjorie Taylor Greene holding a sword over his head and other members of the caucus saying any “coalition” deal with Democrats is a non-starter politically.
“I can tell you this for sure: If there is a motion and Democrats jump in to support Johnson, that greatly diminishes him because then he’ll immediately become the ‘uniparty’ speaker,” said a senior House Republican allied with Johnson, adding that the GOP majority as they know it would at that point be lost even before the election. “Everything would be run on suspension because people would take down rules – or they’ll do continuous motions to vacate,” the Republican continued, though Playbook notes others are saying it basically already is a coalition given that everything that has passed that has anything to do with actual governing has passed under suspensions.
Still, a formalization of this arrangement would “infuriate the GOP base,” Playbook writes as if they weren’t already constantly fucking infuriated every single minute of every single day since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. Another problem lies with Johnson himself after five months on the job. “In private conversations in recent weeks, he’s expressed his exhaustion and complained about a lack of sleep and the demands of frequent traveling. When shit hits the fan, members say, he’ll have some soul-searching to do,” Playbook writes with the definite air of a pre-mortem.