Patricia Lopez: House GOP resignations send a very clear message

Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher’s abrupt resignation Friday, which followed that of Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, narrows the paper-thin GOP House majority to a single vote.

That should be the final signal to House Speaker Mike Johnson that his power – and his only job protection – lies in bypassing the extremists in his party’s Freedom Caucus trying to control him. He should reach out to other conservatives – of which there are many – and yes, even Democrats.

It’s how Johnson succeeded in getting the $1.2 trillion spending bill passed that averted a government shutdown at the last minute and could be the key to getting desperately needed aid to Ukraine.

Johnson is acutely aware that the House record is dismal and that this Congress is on track to being one of the least productive in modern history. His GOP majority has little to show beyond a crippling level of infighting that has made legislating impossible. The chamber managed to pass a little more than 40 bills in the last year or so – the lowest number since the 1950s.

Buck, a stalwart fiscal conservative and one-time Freedom Caucus member, pointed that out in November, when he announced he would not seek re-election, and gave his colleagues a tongue-lashing for being “obsessively fixated on retribution and vengeance for contrived injustices of the past.”

By March, Buck was so fed up that he decided to leave early. Among his complaints: the nonsensical attempts to impeach President Joe Biden and the continued lies about the “stolen” 2020 election. “We’ve taken impeachment and we’ve made it a social media issue,” he said.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who spearheaded the impeachment effort, recently acknowledged that after well over a year, his fruitless inquiry would end without a vote. He muttered something about “criminal referrals,” but the reality is that his committee failed to produce any solid charges or evidence of wrongdoing by the president.

In a final gesture of defiance, Buck became the first Republican to sign the Democrats’ discharge petition for Ukraine aid, a position opposed by the Freedom Caucus and former President Donald Trump. Hinting at future resignations, Buck told reporters ominously, “I think it’s the next three people that leave that they’re going to be worried about.”

Gallagher, a former Marine and committee chair who was considered a rising star, was next out of the gate. He didn’t publicly dress down his colleagues, but he timed his April 19 departure to ensure that under Wisconsin law, his seat would not be filled before November – an unmistakable message.

There is little doubt at this point that the House under GOP rule has become a hostile workplace, leading to an unprecedented number of resignations.

Johnson, mere months into the job, has already had a motion to vacate filed against him by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – a warning shot for his having dared to work with Democrats a second time to pass the budget bill that spared the nation a government shutdown. It was the same issue that felled former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who resigned his seat shortly after he was ousted as speaker. Greene, another authoritarian wanna-be, has called for Gallagher to be expelled from Congress soon, to trigger a special election.

The Freedom Caucus makes up 42 members of the now 217 House GOP conference. That’s a fair number, but not enough to be the tail wagging the dog. Their power is amplified by their insistence on treating Trump like some kind of president-in-exile whose commands are to be obeyed, whether it’s a rejection of a border bill that read like a wish list of GOP goals or a demand to impeach Biden or others, such as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Gallagher objected strongly to that last one.

Much has been made of the fact that a majority of Republicans opposed the spending bill. More interesting – and overlooked – is the fact that 101 Republicans joined with 185 Democrats to pass it. That is more than enough Republicans to defang the Freedom Caucus and reduce them to the noisy back-benchers they are. Otherwise, if Buck is right and even a couple of more members resign, the next speaker fight could, theoretically, install Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in that role.

Johnson is a Trump ally, it’s true. But without compromise, he and his majority will be neutered. History can remember him as a puppet, whose six-month reign was marked by chaos, dysfunction and ended prematurely by the likes of Greene. Or he can reach deeper, exercise the significant powers of his role, and pass a border bill and the aid for Ukraine that he and a number of his conference already support.

Patricia Lopez is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. She is a former member of the editorial board at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she also worked as a senior political editor and reporter.