Why Johnson's perilous moment threatens Trump's agenda

Mike Johnson is trying to avoid the mistakes of his predecessor as he faces the toughest test of his political career on Friday.

With his bid to keep his speakership on the line — despite support from President-elect Donald Trump — the Louisiana Republican is looking to sidestep the kinds of side deals with conservative Republicans that ultimately cost Kevin McCarthy his own political future. But that's a hard tightrope to cross.

Fiscal hawks want Johnson to make commitments, including giving them greater control over how bills move to the floor and slashing spending — pledges that could be untenable for Johnson with a razor-thin GOP margin. And while conservatives believe that Johnson is keeping an open mind on some of their demands, they’re also concerned about whether he will keep the three conservative rebels on the House Rules Committee, according to one Republican with knowledge of the matter, granted anonymity to detail private conversations.

The stakes are huge, and no one knows how it will play out in the coming hours. Around a dozen Republicans are on the fence, despite Johnson working the last several days to lock down the 218 votes he needs. He can only afford to have one Republican vote for someone else on the floor, but several on Thursday indicated they won’t announce how they will vote in advance.

While Johnson says his plan is to win the speakership right away on Friday, he's also signaling that in order to get there he might show more flexibility with GOP hardliners.

”People are talking through process changes they want, and those kinds of things, and I’m open to that,” he said Thursday as he left a meeting with hardliners. He added that if he doesn’t win on the first ballot, “that’s the process of Congress with a small majority.”

Given the uncertainty, some GOP lawmakers worry that a drawn-out speakership fight will force Johnson to cave and agree to policies that would make it harder for Republicans to pass priorities on the border, energy and taxes. Those goals will already be difficult, as they wrangle with an incredibly thin margin in the House.

The speaker race is House Republicans’ first real test of their ability to unify in the new Congress.

“We need to get that taken care of, get it behind us, and get on with our work on policy,” Republican Policy Committee Chair Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said in a brief interview, adding that a messy speaker fight would “certainly” make accomplishing the party’s policy goals harder.

Another House Republican lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly, added that Friday “needs to go smoothly or this year is going to be tragic.”

Yet the early demands are already piling up for Johnson: Rep. Chip Roy is angling to be chair of the Rules Committee, while the speaker’s allies urge him to remove the Texas Republican from the panel entirely. The other two conservative members of the panel aren’t clear on their futures either: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the lone Republican who has already said publicly he’ll vote against Johnson, has signaled he expects he’ll likely lose his seat, while Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) recently told POLITICO that he would like to stay on but he hasn’t gotten guidance from Johnson.

Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz, who is known for regularly causing a ruckus ahead of key votes and then folding, publicly served Johnson with a laundry list of demands last month in order to secure her support. A close friend of Massie’s, Spartz is also seen as the most unpredictable of the undecided members.

“We had a good meeting with the speaker, discussed some things. In a lot of things we agree,” Rep. Victoria Spartz said.

Spartz met with Johnson behind closed doors on Thursday, telling reporters after that she will make a decision about the speaker’s race on Friday — one of many who seem to be waiting until the last minute to weigh in.

“We had a good meeting with the speaker, discussed some things. In a lot of things we agree,” Spartz said.

GOP members from across the conference are warning Johnson against any bigger concessions, like the kind they argue eventually crippled McCarthy’s speakership.

“It will cause problems elsewhere,” said one Republican lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

It’s not just the speaker's race that’s presenting early headaches for Johnson. House lawmakers also have to approve a rules package that governs how the chamber operates, an effort that won’t get Democratic help. Johnson similarly needs near-unanimity to move forward on the package of rules that leaders released on Wednesday, and Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) are both already raising concerns. Johnson can’t pass it if he loses both of them.

There’s a real risk for Johnson if he bends to the demands of his hardliners. His predecessor, McCarthy, cut a flurry of deals before and during the 15 rounds it took him to win the gavel, including making it easier to oust a speaker and giving his hardliners plum positions on the Rules Committee. But those agreements ultimately planted the seeds for the House GOP’s perennial chaos over the past two years, and centrists accused McCarthy of bowing too far to his antagonists, sacrificing leadership’s power and still getting ousted just 10 months later.

Several of Johnson’s holdouts were tightlipped on Thursday as they left his office, though one acknowledged that Johnson “has work to do” to remain speaker. Another, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), added that the group is “keeping our powder dry.” Asked if they feared retribution from Trump if they do not back the incoming president’s pick, Reps. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) and Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) shrugged off the threat. Cloud later clarified in a tweet that he doesn’t want to delay Trump’s agenda but is instead seeking “structural changes” to “how the House operates.”

Norman declined to say if the group would settle for verbal commitments or if they needed to see something in writing, but said they were dug in on the predictable areas: “fiscal discipline, securing the border, pass reconciliation.”

“The president has got four years, but in reality he’s got 12 to 14 months,” he added.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

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