Last week there was a pretty sizable hue and cry when House Speaker Mike Johnson pulled down the continuing resolution funding the government. Johnson’s critics warned that the move was a prequel to his stripping out the SAVE Act, the bill putting teeth into a ban on noncitizens voting in federal elections.

Our understanding was that this criticism was wrong. The problem wasn’t Johnson’s insufficient commitment to including the SAVE Act, which is being treated as a poison pill by the Senate leadership on both sides – Chuck Schumer says it’s a dead letter and Mitch McConnell (of course!) is scolding House Republicans for risking a government shutdown over the SAVE Act – but that he didn’t have the votes to pass the CR with the SAVE Act included.

Meaning that the problem isn’t Johnson. It’s the House GOP caucus.

But this morning it looks like the ducks have lined up, because Johnson just released a statement saying this…

“Congress has an immediate obligation to do two things: responsibly fund the federal government and ensure the security of our elections.

“Because we owe this to our constituents, we will move forward on Wednesday with a vote on the 6-month CR with the SAVE Act attached.

“I urge all of my colleagues to do what the overwhelming majority of the people of this country rightfully demand and deserve — prevent non-American citizens from voting in American elections.”

You don’t move a CR to fund the government unless you have the votes to pass it.

Or maybe you do, but our sense is that’s not what’s happening.

We’re interpreting this as Johnson has the GOP caucus behind including the SAVE Act in the CR, and probably has some swing-district Democrats willing to go along as well. So they’ll pass the CR and give the Democrats a little less than two weeks to pass their own version in the Senate.

Which they will do, and the Senate version will strip out the SAVE Act.

All the while the Democrats’ allies in the legacy corporate media will hammer Johnson and the House Republicans as terrorists and wreckers of Our Democracy for insisting that American elections be free of pollution by the 14 million illegal aliens they’ve shepherded into the country for the exact purpose of tipping the demographics over and creating a new electorate the American people never chose to permit.

Is this an issue the voters will punish the GOP for standing firm on?

Meanwhile, that CR will authorize the government to run a deficit of more than $2 trillion over the next year, when almost all of that deficit spending does more aggregate harm than good to our economy, culture and politics.

Which is on Johnson. As Speaker, his job is to insure Congress does a better job of controlling the national purse. But of course, he doesn’t have the votes to do that either, because his caucus is too small and too weak.

How does this end? It ends without the SAVE Act becoming law this year, of course. We know that.

The real test here for Johnson isn’t whether he wins this fight. He isn’t going to win this fight because Joe Biden isn’t going to sign anything with the SAVE Act in it, and Chuck Schumer won’t pass anything including it through the Senate.

So the best you can do is raise the issue and draw as much attention to it as possible in order to help your candidates in both the House and Senate – who will now have a blockbuster issue they can run on. “Vote for me and I’ll make sure it’s just Americans voting in American elections, while my opponent will give Mexicans, Venezuelans, Haitians, Somalis and Afghans who didn’t even come here legally the ability to cancel out your vote.”

It’s almost impossible to believe that won’t be a disaster for the Democrats. But they look willing to tube this election and wait out the GOP over the long run. Because as long as those illegals stay here, they’ll find a way to get them on the voter rolls and they’ll be good welfare-Democrat voters.

Or if not, their kids will.

They’re playing for the 2044 election more than the 2024 election.

So should the GOP.

The thing is, there’s no way to implement the SAVE Act in time for this election. Not now. This is a principled fight more than a practical fight, which isn’t to say it’s a bad idea. And it might not be a bad idea to force a government shutdown for a few days and frame things as best the GOP can – namely, that the Democrats are willing to shut down their precious federal government in order to prevent anyone from interfering with their plans to replace the legal American electorate.

And if Johnson can extract some sort of consideration that he can use as a victory, then this will be worthwhile.

What consideration that will be, what he’ll be able to get, we can’t say. It would depend on McConnell, who is basically checked out at this point, interceding and bargaining with Schumer on behalf of his own side. McConnell doesn’t do that anymore; he represents Schumer to Johnson rather than the reverse. And the Senate GOP caucus is mostly sheep; they’d likely vote for including the SAVE Act, but there is no majority within the caucus for toppling McConnell, or John Cornyn, the RINO designate for McConnell’s replacement, over that fight.

So it probably won’t end well.

But you don’t fully lose the war unless you stop fighting battles. And at least Johnson seems willing to keep fighting. We’d like to see more, but including the SAVE Act and making the Democrats bleed for their Great Replacement aims is better than not doing it.