When Louisiana’s Mike Johnson was pulled from obscurity and elected House speaker last month, many conservatives were cautiously optimistic that the man with the self-professed biblical “worldview” and somewhat solid voting record would be the fighter they’ve needed to halt Democrats’ Marxist takeover of society. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to discover that Johnson is just as weak-kneed as his Republican predecessors.
On Tuesday afternoon, Johnson and House Republicans are set to surrender to Democrats yet again on a major government spending fight. Rather than stand strong and fight for conservative priorities, Johnson is proposing a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the federal government funded through the beginning of next year. Unsurprisingly, the proposal does nothing to address key issues plaguing the nation, such as the Biden-manufactured crisis at the U.S. southern border, and maintains already-high spending levels.
With members of the House Freedom Caucus expected to vote against the measure, Johnson will need the help of House Democrats to send the package to the Senate. Given leading House Democrats’ positive remarks about the bill, the GOP speaker is likely to get it.
Here’s a little tip for Republicans: If Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., one of the House’s most radical leftists, is praising your bill and claiming it includes “[t]wo of the big things” Democrats wanted, then chances are your bill sucks.
Of course, none of this appears to matter to Johnson, who’s been making his rounds on cable news to insult the intelligence of Republican voters by acting like his CR is the greatest thing since Elizabeth Warren discovered what a peace pipe is. During an interview on CNBC, the speaker tried to make the case that kicking the spending can down the road is good because it’s better than a massive omnibus spending package and keeps the government open.
“I think we’ll have bipartisan agreement that” passing a short-term CR “is a better way … to have the actual appropriations process,” Johnson said. “We have a shutdown looming, and we’ve got to prevent that because that would do even more harm for the economy.”
Got that? It’s avoiding a government shutdown that’s the real problem. Not record-high federal spending; or the invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border; or the politically weaponized Justice Department; or Covid fascism; or DEI in the military; or Biden’s federal election interference; or anything else Republican voters care about.
But Johnson and House GOP leadership’s betrayal is neither new nor surprising. It’s just another example of the fecklessness that’s infected the GOP for years. Recall last year when Senate Republicans helped Democrats pass legislation that declared war on the institution of marriage and religious liberty, targeted Second Amendment rights, and increased federal spending. Without Republican support, those measures never would have made it to Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
Republicans in the upper chamber are also actively siding with Democrats to attack their GOP colleague, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who’s using his power to protest the Pentagon’s radical abortion policy. Instead of standing for life, Alaska’s Dan Sullivan and his merry band of useful idiots have spent the last several weeks lambasting Tuberville for holding up Biden’s military nominations, some of whom are out-of-the-closet Marxists. Who needs Democrats when you’ve got Republicans like these?
Outside of a few elected Republicans, the majority of the GOP is a fake opposition party. They never fight on issues that matter when they matter and routinely cave on the major political fights of our time.
When was the last time Republicans came out on top of Democrats in any given legislative policy fight? And when’s the last time Democrats put forward a spending measure in which Republicans are the ones saying the “negotiated” bill accomplishes the will of conservative voters? There’s only one legitimate political force playing to win in Washington, D.C., and it’s not the Republican Party.
At the end of the day, GOP voters must realize that politicians work for the people, not the other way around. If an elected Republican isn’t fighting and voting based on the interests of his or her voters, it’s incumbent upon conservatives to get active in Republican primaries and throw them out of office. Until then, conservatives should continue to expect more of the same, in which Democrats destroy the country while Republicans stand around and watch.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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