Speaker Mike Johnson’s weakened position inside the House GOP conference has sparked delicate internal discussions about who could potentially replace him if he can’t hang on to the job – whether it’s in this Congress or the next one, according to interviews with over a dozen Republican lawmakers and aides.
It’s been a long time coming, this has been fermenting since the GOP embraced the tea party movement. They thought they could maintain their hierarchy over the extremist in the party by handing out committee membership, and until Trump came along it was working out.
It will be interesting to see whether the old guard will pull rank, and clean out the freedom caucus from important committees, or if they are just going to throw the towel and hand the party over. Either way, it’ll be interesting, the GOPs largely remained politically capable due to their previous ability to whip the house members into compliance with the speaker.
The old guard are running for the hills (and still supporting the extremists). They handed it all over the second they bought into any part of The Big Lie or the Jan 6 excuses. The GOP dead. It’s the GQP now.
That said, they’re only “extremist” in that they can’t be bothered to not say horrible things while pursuing horrible policies. The old guard did the latter but smiled more.