House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) decision to stay in Washington D.C. to push a bill keeping the government open for three more months across the finish line meant he missed a scheduled appearance in front of MAGA activists. Now, the GOP's hardline base is turning against him.
In an analysis for the Bulwark (an establishment conservative website), journalist Andrew Egger contrasted MAGA's icy response to Johnson's snub with their embrace of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) at that same event. Egger noted that on Sunday, the Florida Republican was met with enthusiasm from the crowd at far-right group Turning Point USA's annual "AmericaFest" conference in Arizona despite the public release of the House Ethics Committee's report on the scandalous allegations against him.
"We need Gaetz back in, don’t we," former White House chief strategist said as the crowd cheered. "Matt, here’s what we need to do. The first day you need to have a press conference... We want to hear names, we want evidence. I don’t know what they’ve done worse, is their own personal behavior up there or what they’ve done to the country."
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Meanwhile, Johnson's decision to skip his Friday address to the group deemed him a heretic to the extreme right faction of the GOP. MAGA influencer Candace Owens called the speaker a "coward," while podcaster Joey Mannarino suggested Johnson's absence meant he didn't want to "get booed offstage." Egger observed that Johnson's decision to govern rather than appease the MAGA base meant his speakership was doomed.
"Last verse, same as the first. As it was with Paul Ryan, as it was with Kevin McCarthy, so it is shaping up to be for Mike Johnson," Egger wrote. "It’s impossible to gain power in the House of Representatives and remain popular with the GOP base, because the demands they have for Congress are so wildly incompatible with reality."
The Bulwark's White House correspondent went on to note that Gaetz's reception as a "martyr" was in line with what he called the "nihilist" sect of the GOP that views the very act of governing "as a form of treachery." And he opined that the logical endpoint of that worldview is a desire to let an authoritarian strongman take a wrecking ball to the institutions tasked with governing.
"It’s a totally perverse way of looking at government—pining for meltdown and anarchy, incentivizing the worst forms of behavior, seeing deep scandal as a feather in a reprobate’s cap," Egger wrote. "But it’s particularly alarming given the other half of the MAGA equation: fervent commitment to whatever Donald Trump wants to do."
READ MORE: Leaked: Damning Gaetz report details 'substantial evidence' of numerous illegal activities
Click here to read Egger's full analysis in the Bulwark.