The House speaker faces a choice of cutting a deal with Democrats or bowing to conservatives and Donald Trump and shutting down the government just before the election.
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With congressional elections just weeks away, Speaker Mike Johnson is caught between a hard-right flank that is spoiling for a fight with Democrats and more mainstream and politically vulnerable Republicans.
With a funding deadline looming, the Republican House speaker was caught between his far right and others in his party eager to avoid a confrontation with Democrats that could shutter the government and cost them politically.
His legislative gambits sputtered, leaving him facing the prospect of cutting a deal with Democrats that could prompt a G.O.P. backlash. That was Kevin McCarthy just one year ago, before he was deposed by his party, and it is his successor Mike Johnson today, less than three weeks before a Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a government shutdown.
“We’ve seen this movie,” said Representative Steve Womack, Republican of Arkansas and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee. “These are reruns.”
Yet this episode may have even higher stakes. Mr. McCarthy was driven out of the speaker’s office for his actions, sustaining a personal and political blow, but Mr. Johnson has not only his job but potentially the fate of his entire party on the line.
With congressional elections just weeks away, Mr. Johnson is caught between a hard-right flank that is spoiling for a fight with Democrats and more mainstream and politically vulnerable Republicans who have no appetite for a shutdown and fear it would tarnish them in the eyes of voters, costing them their slim House majority.
Complicating matters is the fact that Donald J. Trump, the former president and current Republican presidential nominee, is saber-rattling for a shutdown if Republicans don’t get their way in tying a spending extension to passage of a law requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. Mr. Johnson has personally embraced the measure, which Democrats vehemently oppose, and attached it to his stopgap spending bill.
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Source: nytimes.com
