Democrats Unite to Protect Speaker Johnson: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Bold Attempt to Oust Him Sparks Backlash!

The Democrats' rationale? A desire to reward Johnson for his bipartisan bona fides in passing a $95 billion foreign aid package, Greene's very casus belli for seeking to topple him. "If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed," Jeffries, Clark, and Aguilar declared defiantly, casting themselves as principled pragmatists rising above "MAGA extremism."

Greene, the MAGA firebrand whose stunts have made her a liberal bête noire, is having none of it. "Johnson will do whatever Biden and Schumer want in order to keep the speaker's gavel," she fumed, branding his Ukraine aid vote a "sellout of America." Her motion has garnered support from just two Republican comrades-in-arms so far: Reps. Thomas Massie and Paul Gosar.

But the rebel yell is muffled, a faint whimper amid a cacophony of naysayers. Rep. Matt Gaetz, the ringleader of the insurrection that dethroned Kevin McCarthy, has disavowed Greene's uprising, fearing it could inadvertently elevate Jeffries to the speakership -- an unpalatable outcome for the MAGA faithful. And erstwhile McCarthy antagonists like Rep. Bob Good have waved the white flag too, citing realpolitik over revolution.

"It's very different than a year ago," Good mused, observing the Republicans' shrunken majority and moderate wing's willingness to empower a "coalition government" with Democrats. Rep. Mike Lawler echoed the pragmatists: "I don't think there's the support within the conference to remove the speaker."

In this brutish arena of raw power politics, the irony is rich. Having leveraged Democratic votes to claim the gavel, Johnson now finds his speakership sustained by those same forces -- the fickle currency of political bargaining. As Rep. Gerry Connelly warned presciently, "If he stays in office, at the sufferance of Democrats, he's a marked man in his own party."

For Johnson and his mainstream conservatives, it's a Faustian pact enabling governance over grandstanding. For Greene's agitators, it's abject capitulation to the establishment. The mercurial tenor of this renegade Congress ensures the battle lines will keep shifting -- and the civil war raging on.