Welcome to this weekend’s edition of the Surge, the only politics newsletter that Joe Biden recommended to President Georges Clemenceau of Bolivia when they met last May.
There was a disgusting—genuinely filthy—amount of political news for a dumb week in February. Republican leaders in both chambers of Congress lost control, with one of them felled by an old, shoeless man in a wheelchair. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Joe Biden but couldn’t help notice he’s gettin’ long in the tooth. Nikki Haley lost the Nevada primary to an enigma.
Let’s begin with Speaker Failson.
By Jim Newell
It continues to dawn on the political world that the friendly greeter who holds the door at church might not have what it takes to serve as speaker of the House. This week, he lost two high-profile votes that he did not need to put on the floor. In the first, House Republicans narrowly failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas because Johnson’s whip operation miscounted (more on that later). But at least that was a narrow defeat—and impeachment will likely pass eventually when Majority Leader Steve Scalise returns from cancer treatment. In the second vote, immediately afterward, Johnson came nowhere close to getting the number he needed to pass stand-alone aid for Israel, the gambit he planned to use to strip Democrats’ leverage in passing aid for Ukraine. Johnson absorbed mockery not just from the media (shoutout to us), but from his own members. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie said that “getting rid of Speaker McCarthy has officially turned into an unmitigated disaster.” We can’t say that anyone would have had an easy time serving as leader of this bare House Republican majority, which is hardly a governing majority at all. But McCarthy probably wouldn’t have put two consecutive failed votes on the floor.
The president was already in lousy shape for reelection before this week, given his 38 percent approval rating. And then he had, by far, his worst week in some time. First, he referred to the presidents of France and Germany as François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, respectively. Regrettably, both Mitterrand and Kohl are among the most dead people on the planet. But the picture got much worse on Thursday, after the Justice Department released special counsel Robert Hur’s report on the Biden classified documents investigation. Biden wasn’t indicted, but he likely would’ve preferred that to what Hur wrote instead. Hur, in part, chose not to charge Biden because the president “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” In the report’s most inflammatory section, Hur wrote that in their interview, Biden “did not remember when he was vice president” and also “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.” Now, it’s a reasonable question as to whether the special counsel really needed to editorialize about his subject like this rather than simply issue a charging decision. But the questionable functionality of Biden’s brain is a concern to a supermajority of voters this election cycle, and these anecdotes will pass the smell test to many. Biden will now need to do more media to prove that he’s still with it. The risk in that, though, is that doing more media could … fail to prove that.
The Surge has never seen a reputational collapse as swift as that of Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford. Here was a quiet, under-the-radar conservative who voted against everything for being too liberal, until he was then tasked to cut a deal with Democrats on border security. He did so, and the deal he cut was deemed stringent enough that the Border Patrol union endorsed it. But given the opposition from Trump, and Republicans’ political incentives not to improve the situation at the border prior to the election, the deal was dead the instant it came out earlier this week. Lankford’s reputation on the right tanked with it. When Lankford, who has maintained a dry sense of humor through this torching of his career, was asked how it felt to be run over by this bus, he replied, “And backed up.” He described himself as feeling “like the guy standing in the middle of the field in a thunderstorm, holding up the metal stick.” In a speech before his bill officially went down in a Senate vote, Lankford referred to a “popular commentator” on the right who had told him, weeks earlier, “If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you.” Although this was a particularly merciless episode of Republican Punished for Trying to Solve a Problem, it’s nothing new when the topic is immigration. Those Republicans who worked with Democrats on previous immigration reform proposals in 2007, 2013, and 2018 have all been burned—and for deals that were far less in Republicans’ favor than this one. After what happened to Lankford, it may be a little longer than the average five years before a Republican has the nerve to try again.
The idea that all but four Senate Republicans would immediately kill a deal that McConnell had authorized—and that his staff had helped Sen. Lankford craft—would have been unheard of a few years ago. The GOP conference leader reached and maintained power for decades by determining the consensus of his conference and standing firmly within it. He’s risked all of that with his unwavering support for Ukraine. He was first overruled by his conference on the issue ahead of a September 2023 funding deadline, when he wanted to reject the House’s spending bill, which didn’t contain aid for Ukraine. But that was modest compared with this week’s revolt over McConnell and Lankford’s border plan. The more-MAGA-committed Senate conservatives called on McConnell to resign after leading them down this path. That’s not likely to happen this year. “They’ve had their shot,” McConnell said of his detractors this week, referring to his reelection as Republican leader last December. As for what’s next? He could be planning to step down as leader after the election. If Trump is elected president, though, the choice won’t be McConnell’s.
OK, OK, OK, the serious stuff is done—let’s get back to the speaker losing the Mayorkas impeachment vote. Why did Johnson think he would win it? By his whip count, he had enough support to pass it by one vote based on that day’s attendance. The issue was that he got that day’s attendance wrong. Texas Rep. Al Green, who had recently undergone abdominal surgery, took an Uber from the hospital in time for the Tuesday impeachment vote. He rolled onto the floor in a wheelchair, wearing hospital scrubs and no shoes, and cast the decisive “no” vote. Johnson confirmed that the appearance caught his team by surprise. “Sometimes when you’re counting votes,” he told reporters on Thursday, “and people show up when they’re not expected to be in the building, it changes the equation.” Sometimes leaders are better at knowing who’s going to be in the building.
We had one competitive Republican presidential primary this week, in Nevada. At long last, Trump—who was not on the ballot, for complicated and dumb reasons—saw his streak of early-state victories break. With 63 percent of the vote, “None of these candidates” trounced Nikki Haley, who earned 30 percent. The Surge was fortunate to grab the first, exclusive interview with the figurative candidate following its victory. We met in a place that doesn’t exist under humanity’s current understanding of space-time, and Noney—as we call our new friend—seemed awfully bashful. In fact, when the abstraction attempted to speak, it would make an anti-sound that absorbed the sound it wasn’t trying to make. Asked whether it could parlay the big victory into momentum going forward, there, again, was only silence. So modest. But is modesty enough to stop Trump? We pressed Noney on this, and all the walls and floors in the theoretical room began to crumble into a void. Sheesh, how’s that for a cue to leave?
Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale officially jumped into the Montana Senate race this week, seeking the opportunity to lose to Jon Tester for the second time. This is the nightmare that Senate Republicans had tried to avoid all cycle. Rosendale is a self-defeating, humorless member of the House Freedom Caucus who cannot, in any form or fashion, mitigate his sharp Maryland accent. (Shoutout to anyone who can get him to say “Timonium” or “Reisterstown” on video this cycle.) He’s a proven loser—which makes him a threat in a Republican primary, where he’ll face off against top party recruit Tim Sheehy, an electable businessman-troop archetype. Despite being electoral poison, Rosendale came ever so close to earning a big endorsement this week: none other than House Speaker Mike Johnson, who reportedly offered Rosendale his endorsement in exchange for his vote on Israel aid (which came nowhere near passing anyway). But after reports of Johnson’s planned endorsement came out, every Republican with a brain screamed at Johnson, which led him to reverse course. By Friday, even Trump had endorsed Sheehy too. Screwing up this winnable state might not be so easy for the GOP after all. Enjoy the rigged “Stupid” Bowl!
Even Kevin McCarthy Wouldn’t Have Let This Happen
5
1
10.02.2024
Welcome to this weekend’s edition of the Surge, the only politics newsletter that Joe Biden recommended to President Georges Clemenceau of Bolivia when they met last May.
There was a disgusting—genuinely filthy—amount of political news for a dumb week in February. Republican leaders in both chambers of Congress lost control, with one of them felled by an old, shoeless man in a wheelchair. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Joe Biden but couldn’t help notice he’s gettin’ long in the tooth. Nikki Haley lost the Nevada primary to an enigma.
Let’s begin with Speaker Failson.
By Jim Newell
It continues to dawn on the political world that the friendly greeter who holds the door at church might not have what it takes to serve as speaker of the House. This week, he lost two high-profile votes that he did not need to put on the floor. In the first, House Republicans narrowly failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas because Johnson’s whip operation miscounted (more on that later). But at least that was a narrow defeat—and impeachment will likely pass eventually when Majority Leader Steve Scalise returns from cancer treatment. In the second vote, immediately afterward, Johnson came nowhere close to getting the number he needed to pass stand-alone aid for Israel, the gambit he planned to use to strip Democrats’ leverage in passing aid for Ukraine. Johnson absorbed mockery not just from the media (shoutout to us), but from his own members. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie said that “getting rid of Speaker McCarthy has officially turned into an unmitigated disaster.” We can’t say that anyone would have had an easy time serving as leader of this bare House Republican majority, which is hardly a governing majority at all. But McCarthy probably wouldn’t have put two consecutive failed votes on the floor.
The president was already in lousy shape for reelection before this week, given his 38 percent approval rating. And then he had, by far, his worst week in some time. First, he referred to the presidents of France and Germany as François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, respectively. Regrettably, both Mitterrand and Kohl are among the most dead people on the planet. But the picture got much worse on Thursday, after the........
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