A Republican insider is warning that Mike Johnson is losing his grip on Congress, as Republicans panic about the dire polling ahead of the midterms.
Columnist David M Drucker, who previously worked for the Washington Examiner, said the speaker of the House is struggling to keep his party in line as President Donald Trump’s war in Iran drives up gas prices and tanks his approval ratings.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is hanging on by a thread,” Drucker wrote in a column for Bloomberg on Monday.
“No Republican with any sense wants Johnson’s job right now. What Johnson is barely maintaining is control — of the GOP conference and ultimately, the House of Representatives," Drucker, who penned a book on the future of the GOP, wrote.
Drucker said between Johnson being “hardly a legislative savant” and the party’s majority “looking shakier by the day,” it is “obvious why Johnson is losing his juice with House Republicans.”
“A midterm election cyclone is forming, stirring up an ‘every person for themselves’ mentality in House Republicans, who know their majority, and their jobs, are on the rocks.
Trump, pushing 80, is tanking in the polls, with record numbers of Americans blaming him for the cost of gas, and the war in Iran.
Even popular presidents such as Republican Ronald Regan experienced backlash in the midterms, where it’s common for voters to punish the party in the White House. But this year, Drucker says, with an historically unpopular president, the situation is dire.
“It’s gotten bad enough that even the US Senate, once safe for the Republicans, may now be in play,” he wrote.
That fear is causing Republicans to shy away from party cohesion and take positions that they believe will boost their re-election chances.
“This is the sort of toxic political atmosphere that discourages incumbents from operating as members of a governing team and encourages them to frame every decision as a matter of personal survival,” Drucker argued.
On Truth Social Sunday night, Trump called for more redistricting in Republican states to bolster the GOP’s narrow House majority.
“We should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done. That is more important than administrative convenience. The byproduct is that the Republicans will receive more than 20 House Seats in the upcoming Midterms!”
The Conservative-stacked Supreme Court last year ruled in favor of a new map for Texas that would add Republican seats, and in April struck out a map that included a new Black-majority district in Louisiana. The move was widely seen as a critical blow to the Voting Rights Act.
As Republicans attempt to redraw boundaries to give their party a boost, Democrats say the president’s support is so eroded they could be looking at a blue wave come November.
“As the American people reject House Republicans’ disastrous, cost-spiking agenda, House Democrats have the momentum to take back the majority,” DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene said.
As it currently stands, Democrats only need to flip three to four seats to take the majority.
