The Li'lest Speaker -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/10/25/the-lilest-speaker/

It’s interesting that Mike Johnson has made himself the face of the shutdown while ceding all of his power (NYT gift link):

Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to put the House on an indefinite hiatus that is now stretching into its second month while the government is shut down is the latest in a series of moves he has made that have diminished the role of Congress and shrunken the speakership at a critical moment.

It’s an approach born of political expedience that could have far-reaching consequences for an institution that has already ceded much of its power to President Trump. And Mr. Johnson, who without the president’s backing wields little influence over his own members, has chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump, a break with many speakers of the past who sought in their own ways to act more as a governing partner with the president than as his underling.

“I’m the speaker and the president,” Mr. Trump has joked, according to two people who heard the remark and relayed it on the condition of anonymity because of concern about sharing private conversations with him.

Well, he’s actually the dictator so he’s right.

That didn’t have to happen. The Republicans just decided to let him politically castrate them and then thank him for the privilege of giving him what he wanted.

Johnson’s just doing press conferences instead of keeping the House in session to do what they normally do which is call difficult votes, like passing a stand alone bill to pay for air traffic control and the like. It’s his strategy. He’s got Newtie advising him:

The absenteeism, people around Mr. Johnson said, is a strategic calculation that the best way to keep his unruly rank and file in line is to place them on an extended leave.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who often serves as a sounding board for Mr. Johnson, said in an interview that if the House were in session, “other issues will begin to clutter this up, and there is some small danger that some Republicans might begin to have a mixed message on the shutdown.”

In fact, such dissonance has already begun bubbling up even with everyone working remotely. The divide among Republicans over whether to extend expiring health insurance subsidies — Democrats’ central demand in the shutdown fight — has highlighted a political vulnerability for the party.

It has all created a strange dynamic on Capitol Hill: Mr. Johnson appears to be using the considerable power of the speakership to render the House irrelevant.

Oh why not? The only job of a GOP official in 2025 is to kiss Donald Trump’s ass. And he’s doing a find job of that, even adopting his crude, childish rhetoric and calling Democrats communists and saying that people who oppose Trump are all a bunch of paid Hamas supporters. It’s a much easier gig than being an actual politician with real power.

The’re all just submissives, yearning of a Daddy to tell them what to do.