Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) managed to secure his position in the face of US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-GA) threat to oust him this week — proving his ability to unite House members, and humiliating his far-right Georgia colleague.
There's one group of fellow Republicans, according to Puck News' Tine Nguyen, that Johnson still must carefully navigate in order to keep his seat in the future: the House Rules Committee. It's "one of the most powerful committee's in Washington," Nguyen notes.
The trio have become an obstacle to Johnson due to his predecessor, US Rep. Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) decision to appoint hardliners Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Ralph Norman (R-SC), and Thomas Massie (R-KY) to the committee.
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Nguyen emphasizes that the three GOP lawmakers "were more than happy to accept the posting, back in January 2023, in exchange for their votes to elevate Kevin McCarthy to speaker."
Former GOP congressman and Rules Committee Chair David Dreier shared his thoughts with Puck: "What McCarthy did was just so unfortunate and just so wrong," he said. "They joined the Rules Committee, in large part, with an agenda of blocking the leadership."
From the moment that Roy, Norman, and Massie were appointed, it was evident that they had a very different agenda. Rather than simply rubber-stamping the edicts of leadership, the triumvirate transformed the former 'speaker’s committee' into an ideological battleground—a perch from which to challenge the G.O.P. establishment and demand concessions, impeding budgets proposals meant to avert government shutdowns, national security bills that need renewal, etcetera. Indeed, much of the House’s recent pandemonium can be traced back to their presence on the committee.
Since Johnson's appointment, she adds:
Plenty of bills were blocked in Rules, sent back to their originating committees, adjusted, and returned. But the expectation was that, when push came to shove, the hardliners would vote with leadership on critical bills—which, obviously, has not happened. Instead, the Roy-Norman-Massie troika has 'institutionalized the chaos,' as a Republican insider put it.
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Furthermore, the hardliner trio has "radically intensified their crusade" over the last few months.
Dreier told Nguyen that during "happier times," a more functional committee would "allow leadership to hear out unhappy members and adjust bills accordingly before scooting them onto the floor—all without their intraparty mess spilling into full view on C-SPAN."
The former committee leader said, "From the very get-go, the notion of appointing people who undermine the nine-to-four majority-minority ratio on the Rules Committee is something that I just find to be very, very, very unfortunate. And I put that mildly. I mean, I was horrified when that decision was made."
One senior Republican aide told Nguyen Roy, Norman and Massie "just have a totally different concept of something that we thought had one gear: forward." He added, "Nobody ever thought to slam the car in reverse while they were on the freeway."
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The Puck News reporter emphasized: "Alas, while it was McCarthy who made this uncomfortable bed, it’s Johnson who is now sleeping in it."
Puck's full report is available at this link(subscription required).**
