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It’s been two weeks since Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to oust the speaker.
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No one on Capitol Hill seems to care.
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The ‘motion to vacate’ has apparently lost its shock value.
Two weeks ago, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene forced the House to vote on a motion to remove Speaker Mike Johnson from office.
It was only the third time in American history that such a vote had taken place, and the result was without recent precedent: most Democrats, along with all but eleven Republicans, voted to protect Johnson’s job, despite his own far-right politics and loyalty to Donald. Trump.
From the Georgian congressman’s perspective, the so-called “uniparty” had been exposed once and for all. And then everyone moved on immediately.
“There will always be another wreck on the highway,” said Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, saying Greene’s impeachment bid “got some publicity at first, and now it’s gone.”
The only Republican in Washington still eager to talk about it is the Georgia congressman himself.
“I don’t support [Johnson’s] leadership at all, and a lot of people don’t,” Greene told a group of reporters on the steps of the House of Representatives on Friday, with a grim laugh.
Still, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas — one of the few Republicans who voted to allow debate on Greene’s motion — told me he hadn’t heard much from his own constituents about his vote. He also tried to downplay the whole thing as a media obsession.
“I am working with the speaker and the leadership team to move things on which we strongly agree,” Roy said. “90% of Americans don’t care about these things that you guys – with all due respect – talk about all the time. I mean, they’re focused on ‘what do you deliver?’ That vote was a statement or a proxy, if you will, about our lack of results.”
In other words, the vote was primarily symbolic.
Roy, former chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz, is among the most eloquent members of the far-right faction of the Republican conference. He has long been dissatisfied with the way things have been going, and has argued — like Greene — that the Republican leadership hasn’t fought hard enough for conservative priorities in government funding laws. Johnson and his defenders counter that there is only so much that can be done with a slim majority in the House of Representatives versus a Senate and White House both controlled by Democrats.
Other Republicans who voted in favor of Greene’s motion were much more likely to hedge when I asked them why they got those votes, emphasizing that they just wanted to see a good debate on the issue — or that they were fighting the dreaded ‘uniparty’ votes.
“I didn’t think at the time it was the wisest thing to do,” said Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri. “But when I was forced to take that vote, I couldn’t — honestly, my stomach turned — I just couldn’t in good conscience vote with the Democrats to allow any of my colleagues on the Republican side of the House to vote.” aisle to vote down, her privileged motion. “
“I was not sent here to be the most bipartisan member,” Burlison added. “People want me to save America.”
“I think I’m pretty ‘based’, as far as I mean, I’m a pretty consistent conservative,” said Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama, who told me he “probably wouldn’t” have voted to throw Johnson out. . “I don’t go into the media too much, but I vote my beliefs, and my district loves that.”
“My constituents didn’t send me here to make friends. They sent me here to change the way this city works, so that’s why I cast my vote the way I did,” said Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, adding that he “didn’t think it was a good time” to hold that vote.
Motions to leave have only been made four times in American history, and the first three times were quite dramatic.
In 1910, then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Joseph Cannon introduced the motion himself, challenging his own members to vote against him. The attempt failed, demonstrating the weakness of his opposition.
In 2015, far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives filed a motion against Speaker John Boehner in 2015, promoting his resignation.
In October 2023, the first successful motion in American history took place, in which the antipathy of Democrats and the machinations of Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida came together to push for the impeachment of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
By contrast, this month’s eviction proposal seemed largely an afterthought, perhaps even a face-saving measure for an ordinary congresswoman who had overestimated her power. After Johnson authorized the aid to Ukraine, Democrats decided to shield him from Greene’s threatened impeachment bid, effectively neutralizing the entire effort.
The Georgia congresswoman, after two days of meetings with Johnson and her co-conspirator, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, seemed hesitant about the entire effort. She finally forced the vote on Wednesday afternoon, shortly before everyone left town for the weekend.
This dysfunction of the current Congress has made some previously rare events—such as motions to censure individual members of the House of Representatives or voting against your own party’s procedural votes—banal, and perhaps even commonplace.
The motion to vacate could be the last casualty.
Read the original article on Business Insider
