Mike Johnson, like his predecessors, is not a magic man. He doesn’t possess some special secret that permits him to unite the moderates and the extremists in his caucus. As a result, we are heading for the pointless shutdown I expected a month ago.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating–this is a fundamental difference between the two parties. In the Senate, for example, the Democrats have only a tiny majority, and their ideologies run from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin. They still manage to govern, because everyone is committed to using government to help the American people. The extreme right of the GOP, on the other hand, has no interest in governing; it just wants to get on Fox News and stick it to the left. It’s not the same thing at all.