The winner of the game of House Speaker musical chairs is … Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who won the job Wednesday with unanimous GOP support.
After a 22-day struggle among Republicans to agree on Kevin McCarthy’s replacement, the right-wingers and the mainstream members in the conference decided to settle on Johnson, despite — or perhaps because of — his limited experience in leadership and lack of a national profile.
As in all good face-saving compromises, there’s some ambiguity over which side has caved — but overall, the right-wingers appear to have emerged triumphant.
We know little about how Johnson would tackle the seemingly intractable governing problems that took down McCarthy, such as how he’d keep the government funded and avoid a shutdown. (He has distributed a plan that would allow for a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown, but the best-laid plans…)
Overall, though, Johnson is a movement conservative close to the Christian right. He’s also a stalwart Trump ally who actively worked to help the former president try to overturn Joe Biden’s victories in key 2020 swing states — making Trump, who helped torch the chances of Johnson’s leading rival Tom Emmer on Tuesday, another winner.
The losers include the existing slate of House GOP leaders, all of whom took embarrassing public L’s over the past few weeks. And while a bloc of mainstream Republicans got some satisfaction in taking down Jim Jordan, they decided to stop there rather than flexing their muscles further — meaning that the party leadership has ultimately gotten further away from them.
Winner (for now): Mike Johnson
Read the full article here
