Kevin McCarthy lost his job as House speaker in October for defying far-right conference members, who were prepared to shut down the government rather than budge from their hardline spending demands. Now, less than two months later, some of those same hardline members seem to be easing up—even suggesting they’d support the $1.59 trillion McCarthy had carved out with the White House that cost him his post. While that number is “still too much for many of us,” House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry said in a news conference Wednesday, “that’s where we have to be.”

“Let’s do our job,” Texas Republican Chip Roy added.

It’s a significant backtrack for the Freedom Caucus—and one that McCarthy may regard as a slap in the face. After all, if these members had been this flexible eight weeks ago, he still might be holding the gavel. Then again, perhaps he’s better off: This wild, wacky conference is Mike Johnson’s problem now. And while the Louisiana Republican danced around a shutdown without suffering the same fate of his predecessor, the same dynamics that did in McCarthy are already starting to resurface.

As Politico reports, Johnson is already facing intensifying scrutiny from some in his conference for showing just a modicum of interest in negotiating over spending—even among Freedom Caucus members who have softened their approach since McCarthy’s ouster. Satisfaction with Johnson is “plummeting,” Roy told Politico. “Every conversation that I’m hearing about is not a good one. So I suggest that should change quickly, or it is not going to work out very well.” McCarthy allies are also up in arms: “He continues to play games,” Ohio Republican Max Miller, a McCarthy supporter, told Politico. “We are talking about a man [who] 30 days ago said that he was an anti-CR guy. We are talking about a man 30 days ago that was anti-Ukraine funding…It shows me he was never really morally convicted in his positions to begin with.”

After a bruising intra-party battle over McCarthy’s removal and the subsequent fight to replace him, there’s not much appetite among Republicans to go to the mats again. Of course, it would take only one member to set the process in motion all over again—and there’s no guarantee it would work out better for Johnson than it did for McCarthy. 

At the end of the day, McCarthy's fatal flaw was that he lacked true convictions, earning him the distrust of…well, just about everybody. Johnson, for his part, has gotten the benefit of the doubt from the extremists of this conference because he’s authentically one of them. Where McCarthy went along with Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Johnson—like Perry, of the Freedom Caucus—helped lead them. Where McCarthy initially tried to tamp down his majority’s impeachment push against Joe Biden, Johnson has been seen as a much more enthusiastic supporter of the ouster effort. Trump’s two impeachments were “meritless,” Johnson—a member of the former president’s defense in the proceedings—claimed to reporters Wednesday. “This, what you’re seeing here, is exactly the opposite.” Indeed, the speaker is forging ahead to hold a vote that could formalize the proceedings McCarthy opened up earlier in the fall, claiming, “The Republican Party stands for the rule of law.”

That might buy him a little more breathing room. But it’s only a matter of time before the conflicts that cost McCarthy catch up with him. “The honeymoon’s over,” Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, a right-wing McCarthy ally, told reporters Wednesday. “I’m frustrated.”