Opinion: Why Democrats shouldn’t throw Speaker Johnson a lifeline

Opinion by Dean Obeidallah

(CNN) — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a firebrand Republican and one of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal allies in the House, filed a motion last week to remove GOP Speaker Mike Johnson.

Greene, who loves media attention almost as much as Trump does, told a gaggle of reporters on Friday that in cooperating with Democrats to craft legislation that kept the US government open, “Johnson has betrayed our conference and broken our rules.”

The spending bills that averted a government shutdown garnered support from many more Democrats (185) than Republicans (101) — and that violates an unwritten but ironclad GOP rule of recent years: Legislation put forward in a Republican-led House needs to be passed by a majority of the chamber’s Republican members.

Any move by Greene to oust Johnson can’t happen right away. The House began a two-week recess on Friday. The Georgia lawmaker — who incidentally has a long history of spewing bigotry and who infamously downplayed the January 6 attack on the Capitol — said at any rate that she may not formally trigger the vote on removing Johnson immediately.

“It’s more of a warning than a pink slip,” she told reporters. “I do not wish to inflict pain on our conference and to throw the House in chaos. But this is basically a warning and it’s time for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new Speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority, instead of standing with the Democrats.”

Now, you might be thinking: Wait — didn’t we just go through this a few months ago when GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz led the charge to remove then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy?

You would be correct. That led to uproar in the House with effectively a three-week work stoppage, as Republicans held a succession of failed votes to elect a new speaker. In the end, Johnson, at the time a mostly little-known GOP lawmaker from Louisiana, was elevated to Speaker by a (temporarily) chastened and exhausted Republican conference.

Now, Greene is threatening a replay of January’s dysfunction, which is possible because of current House rules which say it takes only one member to force a vote on removal of the Speaker. Democrats could, however, save Johnson’s job by voting as a bloc, along with moderate Republicans, to prevent his removal. And in fact, a few Democrats have suggested they are open to this. But they should not — for many reasons.

First, Johnson is a far-right election denier. After the vicious January 6 attack on our Capitol that aimed to keep Trump in power despite his 2020 election loss, Johnson returned to the House and voted not to certify President Joe Biden’s victory. In other words, Johnson tried to achieve, by way of his House vote, what the January 6 attackers sought to do by violence.

And Johnson — who was endorsed by Trump for Speaker — did far more than simply vote against Biden’s win. He personally recruited other GOP House members in December 2020 to sign an amicus brief he had drafted and later filed with the US Supreme Court in support of a Texas lawsuit to overturn Biden’s wins in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

At the time, Johnson posted on social media, “President Trump called me this morning to let me know how much he appreciates the amicus brief we are filing on behalf of Members of Congress. Indeed, ‘this is the big one!’” That lawsuit was swiftly rejected by the high court.

Then there are Johnson’s extremist views on abortion, including support for a bill asserting that life begins at conception and that defined fetuses as human beings, in addition to his backing of an array of restrictive abortion bans. The real world result of such restrictive measures — versions of which have been enacted in numerous GOP-controlled states — is that women are barbarically forced to carry a fetus to term against their will.

In fact, after the conservative US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Johnson took to Twitter trumpeting that officials in Louisiana would impose “hard labor for 1-10 yrs” and a hefty fine on anyone who performed an abortion. All of this led House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to declare a short time after Johnson was elected Speaker, “Mike Johnson, probably more so than almost any other member of the House Republican conference, wants to criminalize abortion care and impose a nationwide ban.”

Jeffries has not indicated if he would be open to saving Johnson from removal following Greene’s announcement of her motion to vacate. But a number of Democrats view the vote to salvage Johnson’s speakership as a way to finally hold a House vote on desperately needed aid for Ukraine.

Any deal, though, would likely require Johnson having to placate the far right of his party by requiring harsh new border security restrictions. Unless Johnson would agree to a co-speakership with the leader of House Democrats, Jeffries and 50-50 power sharing on all House issues, Democrats should not save Johnson from the GOP’s self-made crisis.

Why would any Democrat vote to keep a person with Johnson’s record as Speaker of the House, placing them only second behind the Vice President in the line of succession to be President? Shouldn’t Democrats want to further remind voters of why they should not trust the GOP to govern any chamber of Congress — or even the White House — when all they bring is chaos and ego driven infighting?

Even Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma — a former House member who keeps close ties with former GOP colleagues there — told CNN that removing Johnson would hurt both GOP House incumbents and GOP challengers seeking to flip seats “because chaos in the House is 100% on us at this point.”

Mullin is absolutely right. That’s why, if Republicans led by Trump’s ally Greene want to remove Johnson, Democrats should not save him. Chaos and disruption might well ensue, which won’t be easy. But no Democratic member of the House should ever vote to keep a Trump-backed, election-denying, anti-abortion extremist in power as Speaker of the House. Not now, or ever.

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