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Sen. Mitt Romney suggested on Friday that embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson’s best chances at retaining his position lie with the Democrats.

“There may be an effort [by his fellow Republicans] to blow everything up but I don’t think — I think the Democrats are smarter than that,” Romney told reporters. “They’d give him support.”

This comes as members of the Republican Party base slam Johnson for having pieced together a gigantic, omnibus-like continuing resolution (CR) that contained a bunch of giveaways to Democrats.

Because of backlash, including from DOGE co-chair Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump, Johnson to his credit eventually scrapped the “cromnibus” in favor of a regular ol’ CR. But anger still remains.

Indeed, according to Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News, up to 25 House Republicans have expressed possible opposition to Johnson as speaker come January when the House must again vote for a speaker.

This is a MASSIVE problem because Johnson can only afford to lose one House Republican vote unless Democrats also vote for his speakership. This of course raises the possibility that he might promise Democrats certain things in exchange for their support.

Trump, for his part, has displayed a lack of confidence in Johnson.

“We’ll see,” he told an NBC News reporter Thursday when asked if he still has confidence in the speaker. “What they had yesterday was unacceptable. … In many ways it was unacceptable. It’s a Democrat trap.”

But Trump did offer a pathway for Johnson to seek redemption.

“If the speaker acts decisively, and tough, and gets rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country, he will easily remain speaker,” he told Fox News.

Trump also called for Johnson to suspend the debt ceiling for a couple of years.

Now, Johnson did scrap the “cromnibus,” which is good. But he didn’t move forward with suspending the debt ceiling. As of Saturday morning, it wasn’t clear how Trump felt about this.

Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Lee has predicted that Johnson will not “remain in power.” Appearing on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” this Thursday, he called for either Department of Government Efficiency co-chair Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy to be the next speaker.

“Vivek, Elon if you’re watching, please sign up, America needs you,” he said.

Sen. Rand Paul has also called for Musk to be the next speaker.

“Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it . . . nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds),” he wrote in a Twitter/X post Thursday morning.

The GOP base meanwhile continues to loudly clamor against Johnson, with many warning him that his time as speaker is quickly approaching an end.

Look:

Vivek Saxena
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