Removing the Speaker of the House of your party TWICE in less than one year, which is now also a presidential election year, is a really bad idea.

Why we are even talking about this is baffling with just six months before the most important election of our lifetime, but it was forced upon me in my reading list this morning.

House lawmakers are bracing for another vote on removing the chamber’s leader this week, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) promising to force the matter to the floor over what she said was mounting frustration with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.). 

Her move comes about seven months after a similar effort by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) who succeeded in ousting Kevin McCarthy as speaker, aided by seven other Republican rebels and all Democrats.

But unlike McCarthy, Johnson is expected to beat back the dissidents and hang onto the gavel, at least for now.

This move is not popular on the other side of the Hill either, as my colleague Jeff Charles wrote last week about one of my favorite politicians, Sen.Ted Cruz, who voiced his disapproval of this nonsense, and he is right on the money.

Ted Cruz Wallops Marjorie Taylor Greene Over Effort to Oust Speaker Mike Johnson

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her effort to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) from his position. Greene and other House Republicans have threatened to force a vote on a motion to vacate that she filed over one month ago.

She recently announced that she would soon pursue this action despite opposition coming from Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Others have criticized her actions, arguing that the ill-fated effort distracts from other legislative priorities.

During an appearance on the RealClearPolitics radio show, Cruz addressed the feud between Greene and Johnson, calling her effort to unseat him “silly” and “counterproductive.”

“Look, I think it is silly. I think it is seriously counterproductive. I think Mike Johnson is a strong conservative who's been given an almost impossible task. He has a tiny majority in the House, just a two-vote majority. That means any three House members run off to the hills and the majority evaporates. And I think Marjorie Taylor-Greene, to try to topple the speaker increases the chances of chaos. It increases the chances of handing control to the Democrats. And there is zero chance a more conservative speaker will result. And so I think what she's doing is really unhelpful to the country.”

This idea is so horrible Democrats are expected to try and squash a move that would hurt Republicans nationally. That is the weirdest and the oddest show of bipartisanship that I can think of, and I know I have seen some odd ones in the past. Yet here we are.

This is also one of those times that the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party and the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, should be — at least behind the scenes — telling one of his biggest supporters to knock it off. There is nothing to be gained here by declaring you're going to remove the speaker because of funding for Ukraine or whatever other excuse is going to be brought up to have this clown show continue as planned. 

If Representative Greene truly wants to help Donald Trump win and get to the required 270 votes in November, then she should be thinking big picture and helping Trump get to that goal and allowing him to handle the situation when he assumes the Oval Office again. Sending a political Sidewinder missile into his candidacy at this moment is extremely ill-advised. Trump is on the upswing, and taking the attention off Biden in any way, shape, or form is just not a good idea.

Particularly when Trump welcomed the speaker to his residence at Mar-a-Lago last month and praised Johnson by saying he was doing a very good job.

I understood why the GOP caucus moved to get rid of Kevin McCarthy when they did because of some of the baggage that he brought to the table. Yet the action to remove McCarthy from that seat should have happened with the original nomination and dragging that out even longer at the beginning as opposed to when it did not even a year into his speakership. Timing with these things is incredibly critical and the situation with how thin the Republican majority has become in the House shows that this is not the time to play these games.

At the end of the day, I believe Speaker Johnson retains his speakership, and that gives Republicans the best chance to add to the majority for the beginning of the next Congress which begins in January of 2025. Hopefully, this will be the last of these tantrums until the next Congress is sworn in.