GOP bracing for 'humiliating defeat' as razor-thin majority erodes: report

The Washington Post reports House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) razor-thin House of Representatives majority is now a majority “in name only’ after numerous retirements and deaths.

“On Thursday, neither party really had the majority in the House,” wrote Post columnist Paul Kane. “Over the course of seven roll-call votes, five times the final tally showed that the exact same number of Republicans and Democrats had voted. The actual tallies of yeas and nays varied between noncontroversial legislation passed by wide margins to a narrow victory for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), helped by a bloc of renegade Republicans.”

Kane said each side in the tally repeatedly had the same number of members casting votes, with “213 lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and a handful of Republicans missing.”

Just recently, Republicans had to delay a vote on a bill affecting the capacity of shower heads after several Republicans warned they might miss the vote. This potentially handed Johnson a "humiliating defeat" on bathroom plumbing, per the Post.

“You are also looking at making sure that everybody is going to be there,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told the Post on Friday.

A historically close 2024 election left Republicans’ majority painfully thin after candidate Donald Trump’s popularity failed to transfer to Republicans in House elections. But then three Republicans resigned outright, including Mark Green (R-Tenn.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and former Trump ally and MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga). It also did not help that Mike Waltz (R-Fla) left the House to become joined President Donald Trump’s White House and then got confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations.

Then, Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) died Tuesday.

The Constitution prohibits temporary appointments to replace House members, so replacing people can take months.

“If not for three deaths and a resignation on their side of the aisle, Democrats could have possibly defeated a few more GOP bills,” said Kane.

But Houston voters will elect a new congressman to replace Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Texas) at the end of January, squeezing Johnson’s GOP’s majority to 218-214. After January, Kane said Johnson will be able to afford only one defection from his side when he tries to pass legislation without any Democratic support.

In fact, only a few more resignations or vacancies will be required on the Republican side to hand the GOP “the same fate that befell them during the Hoover administration,” said Kane.

Read Kane's Washington Post report at this link.