When the 118th Congress started in January 2023, anyone with a brain knew that House Republicans would have a difficult time getting anything significant done. The margins were too tight, and there were—and still are—more than enough Members willing to sink procedural votes and bills.
Kevin McCarthy’s tenure ended exactly how I thought it would. His fate was sealed the moment he acquiesced to the demand to revert the motion to vacate back to a motion by a single Member. He wasn’t trusted because he wasn’t seen as a conservative. He was a leadership guy, through and through. He wanted to be Speaker so badly that he undercut himself to get there.
Could anyone else have gotten the votes to become Speaker in January 2023? Maybe. We’ll never know. But by the time October 2023 rolled around, it was clear that anyone running for the job would face a difficult path to get the gavel. Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) couldn’t get it. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) put the conference through grueling votes in his failed effort. Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) had a Trump problem. The House Republican Conference settled. It settled for Mike Johnson.
When Mike Johnson was elected Speaker of the House, he was a three-term backbencher with very limited legislative accomplishments. He sponsored three bills that became law in three terms. Two of those were minor, noncontroversial bills—the Save the Liberty Theatre Act and the Red River National Wildlife Refuge Boundary Modification Act. The third was a Post Office naming. Excluding housekeeping resolutions, he passed four others out of the House, each of which stalled in the Senate.
Johnson never held a committee gavel, although he was the chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government for ten months. He also led the Republican Study Committee for a term. Prior to his time in Congress, Johnson served as in the Louisiana House of Representatives for a little more than a year before he launched his campaign for Congress. His time prior to Congress doesn’t really matter much. Well, not in this context, at least.
Mike Johnson should not be Speaker of the House. In any other time, he wouldn’t be. He would simply chair his subcommittee and maybe, eventually, he would chair the Judiciary Committee once he had enough seniority.
What I’ve seen since Johnson took the gavel is a lot of hubris coming from him and his team. He hasn’t recognized that the Conference just wanted the embarrassment that dominated American politics for nearly a month to end. If a puppy could’ve gotten 218 votes on the floor, that puppy would be Speaker of the House right now. And let’s face it, the puppy couldn’t do a worse job.
Personally, I don’t think Republicans will keep the House. Democrats likely take back the chamber this fall. Even if Republicans manage to keep the majority, I have a hard time believing that Johnson will remain Speaker in the next Congress. I don’t even know if there’s a place in leadership for him if Republicans are in the minority.
A motion to vacate has been filed to oust Johnson. The Member who filed it is a self-aggrandizing, attention-seeking mouthbreather. She’ll probably make that motion privileged and force a vote. Does Johnson survive? Only if Democrats save him, and they’re not going to do that unless they get something in return. A Republican Speaker who needs Democrats to keep the gavel isn’t going to go over well with the increasingly populist conservative base of the Republican Party. (Personally, I support the Senate-passed Ukraine bill, which is what could save Johnson.)
Should Johnson survive? Ousting him is a distraction, and it would come in an election year when Republicans already have a very weak grasp on power. With Republicans having only 217 seats by the end of next week to Democrats 213, I don’t know if anyone can get the votes to win the gavel if Johnson is booted.
There’s another thought about this. Maybe the House is just broken. That’s a post for another day, but I’ll leave you, dear reader, with this: incentives matter. Right now, the incentives for Members of Congress are incredibly slanted to boost grifters, charlatans, and hyperpartisanship. If the incentives are changed, the culture of the House will change.