CNN’s Scott Jennings Bashes GOP Holdouts in Speaker Fight: ‘This Is All a Bridge to Nowhere’
CNN Republican commentator Scott Jennings lambasted GOP holdouts that are balking at supporting Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) re-election, calling their efforts nothing more than a “bridge to nowhere.”
Jennings’ quip was a callback to a conservative critique of an Obama-era infrastructure bill, and the term more broadly refers to spending enormous resources and effort to construct a bridge that doesn’t actually lead anywhere.
Due to the Republicans’ slim House majority after the November elections — which became even narrower after former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) resigned — Johnson can only afford to lose two Republican votes. So far, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has emphatically declared he won’t vote for Johnson with dramatic language (“You can pull all my fingernails out, you can shove bamboo up in them, you can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow.”), so the speaker can only lose one more Republican.
President-elect Donald Trump has endorsed Johnson and even whipped calls in support but the speaker’s fate remains unclear.
“You know what strikes me about all this machination?” said Jennings to anchor Jake Tapper. “This is all a bridge to nowhere. I mean, all these people voting no, voting present. What is — to what end is the Republican party doing this?”
Jennings continued:
And I think this is probably what Donald Trump’s frustration is and why he’s putting so much time and effort into getting Johnson elected here. There’s no alternative, you know, these no votes, present votes. There’s no alternative.
Johnson is the only one who can do this today. And the sooner he does it, the better off Trump will be and the better off the Republican party will be. The Republican voters of this country elected Trump and these people to do things, not fight amongst themselves.
They want to fight somebody, there’s a whole bunch of Democrats in there they can fight with. So I hope that message is being delivered. I know people have policy preferences and are upset about this, that, and the other, but you can’t fix any of it until you get leadership elected. And that’s why I hope this happens on the first ballot today.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
