The death of a "small government' GOP

When Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., ascended to his new role as speaker of the House, word among the punditry's smart set was that he faced the same uphill battle as the last Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California. McCarthy had to suffer through 15 ballots to get elected last January, and had held the gavel for just nine months when he decided to pass a short-term funding bill in September, avoiding a government shutdown through a compromise that won some Democratic votes. To McCarthy's Republican opponents, this was supposedly an outrageous offense against "conservative" values, and an intra-GOP coup spearheaded by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida led to his ouster as speaker within days. Johnson, who only got the job after weeks of GOP infighting — and three other failed candidates! — faced the same challenge: Keeping the government open with a slim Republican majority so deeply at odds with each other they keep getting into physical altercations. So he did the exactly same thing McCarthy did: He passed a short-term spending bill with Democratic votes — in fact, mostly with Democratic votes. 

But while there's been plenty of performative bellyaching from some Republicans who voted against the bill — and 93 GOP members did so — there's a sense that Johnson can probably avoid McCarthy's fate. That's true even though, as Georgetown political scientist Matt Glassman told Politico, traditional Republican priorities got dumped: "You don’t see any spending cuts, you don’t see any policy riders." In fact, Glassman called this a "clean" spending bill that resembled those "written by Democratic majorities" in previous sessions. 

In other words, McCarthy and Johnson did exactly the same thing, pushing through a bipartisan bill that supposedly offends "fiscal conservatives." Yet only McCarthy went to the guillotine, metaphorically speaking, for doing that. Theories abound as to why things played out that way: "exhaustion" among Republicans, a desire to get out of Washington for the Thanksgiving holiday, a lack of personal animosity toward Johnson.