GOP Crazies Give Speaker Mike Johnson a Preview of the Chaos they Can Create in the House

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is running again for the top post in the House of Representatives, and he has incoming President Trump’s support. In a normal world, there would be no drama around an incumbent who won unanimously and was endorsed by the leader of the party, but the Republican Party does not live in anything remotely resembling a normal world and left objective reality behind long ago. The GOP is a collection of lunatics who have been incentivized to become their worst selves, both through their election victory and the razor-thin margin in the House enabling anyone to grab a psycho friend or two and blow up the Republican agenda at the behest of their own egos.

Which is what Mike Johnson is struggling with today. The Republicans will vote for their next Speaker, and as of right now, Johnson does not seem to have the votes to become Speaker of the House. Yesterday, there were about 12 to 15 holdouts, and while the Speaker has made progress whittling that down, he still needs more. This chaos and uncertainty is what governance is likely going to look like in the narrowest House majority in 100 years. The Republicans have 220 seats to the Democrats’ 215, but after accounting for Matt Gaetz leaving his post and two other Representatives joining the Trump administration, the margin will be 217 to 215 when Trump takes office.

Which means that looney tunes like Marjorie Taylor Greene can appoint themselves as the de facto leader of the House. All it takes is her and Lauren Bobert and another holdout, like Andy Ogles who said he has made a decision on his Speaker vote but will not unveil it before his vote, and the Democrats can band together for a House majority. While the Republican trifecta is obviously not good and they are going to pass some truly monstrous bills this year, the potential for infighting that derails the GOP agenda is extremely high, and between this and the H-1B visa fight that Elon Musk spent his Christmas fighting with the Republican base over, we are getting indications that the Republican Party may struggle to work together.

Mike Johnson’s best asset right now is that today is Friday, and the last thing people in Congress want to do is work on a weekend or a holiday. One of the best ways to predict what will happen in Congress is just to look at their schedule and see when they are slated to work and when they are slated to go on vacation, and it is generally a good bet that Congress will get something done at the end of the work week because like many of us, Congress hates doing their jobs, especially on the weekends.

Mike Johnson has been making progress against his holdouts, and it would not be a surprise to see him follow the same dealmaking path that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy did to tame the GOP’s feral beasts. Regardless of what happens today, the fact that this has been as contentious as it has been and the holdouts are the craziest people in the Republican Party, strongly suggests that this will not be the first time the GOP will have trouble getting their House members to vote for their agenda under the incoming Trump administration. Between the razor-thin margin in the House and people like Marjorie Taylor Greene being emboldened to become her worst self, there is likely a lot of intra-party chaos ahead for the Republican Party.