WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Mike Johnson easily secured enough votes to be elected House speaker on Wednesday, as Republicans were eagerly elevating the little-known conservative leader to the seat of U.S. power and ending for now the political chaos in their majority.
With voting still underway, Johnson, of Louisiana, was picking up support from most all Republicans anxious to put the past weeks of tumult behind and get on with the business of governing.
A lower-ranked member of the House GOP leadership team, Johnson emerged as the fourth Republican nominee in what has become an almost absurd cycle of political infighting since Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as GOP factions jockey for power. While not the party’s top choice for the gavel, the deeply religious and even-keeled Johnson has few foes and an important GOP backer: Donald Trump.
“I think he’s gonna be a fantastic speaker,” Trump said Wednesday at the New York courthouse where the former president, who is now the Republican front-runner for president in 2024, is on trial over a lawsuit alleging business fraud.
Trump said he hadn’t heard “one negative comment about him. Everybody likes him.”
Three weeks on without a House speaker, the Republicans have been wasting their majority status — a maddening embarrassment to some, democracy in action to others, but not at all how the House is expected to function.
Far-right members have refused to accept a more traditional speaker, and moderate conservatives don’t want a hard-liner. While Johnson had no opponents during the private roll call late Tuesday, some two dozen Republicans did not vote, more than enough to sink his nomination.
But when GOP Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik rose to introduce Johnson’s name Wednesday as their nominee, Republicans jumped to their feet for an extended standing ovation.
“House Republicans and Speaker Mike Johnson will never give up,” she said.
Democrats again nominated their leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, criticizing Johnson as an architect of Trump’s legal effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election he lost.
With Republicans controlling the House only 221-212 over Democrats, Johnson can afford just a few detractors to win the gavel.
Overnight the endorsements for Johnson started pouring in, including from failed speaker hopefuls — Rep. Jim Jordan, the hard-charging Judiciary Committee chairman, gave his support, as did Majority Leader Steve Scalise, the fellow Louisiana congressman, who stood behind Johnson after he won the nomination.
“Mike! Mike! Mike!” lawmakers chanted at a press conference after the late-night internal vote, surrounding Johnson and posing for selfies in a show of support.
Anxious and exhausted, Republican lawmakers are desperately trying to move on.
Johnson’s rise comes after a tumultuous month, capped by a head-spinning Tuesday that within a span of a few hours saw one candidate, Rep. Tom Emmer, the GOP Whip, nominated and then quickly withdraw when it became clear he would be the third candidate unable to secure enough support from GOP colleagues after Trump bashed his nomination.
“He wasn’t MAGA,” said Trump, referring to his Make America Great Again campaign slogan.
Attention quickly turned to Johnson. A lawyer specializing in constitutional issues, Johnson had rallied Republicans around Trump’s legal effort to overturn the 2020 election results.
Elevating Johnson to speaker would give Louisianians two high-ranking GOP leaders, putting him above Scalise, who was rejected by hard-liners in his own bid as speaker.
Deeply religious, Johnson is affable and well liked, with a fiery belief system. Colleagues swiftly started giving their support.
“Democracy is messy sometimes, but it is our system,” Johnson said after winning the nomination. “We’re going to restore your trust in what we do here.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who led a small band of hard-liners to engineer McCarthy’s ouster at the start of the month, posted on social media that “Mike Johnson won’t be the Speaker the Swamp wants but, he is the Speaker America needs.”
Republicans have been flailing all month, unable to conduct routine business as they fight amongst themselves with daunting challenges ahead.
The federal government risks a shutdown in a matter of weeks if Congress fails to pass funding legislation by a Nov. 17 deadline to keep services and offices running. More immediately, President Joe Biden has asked Congress to provide $105 billion in aid — to help Israel and Ukraine amid their wars and to shore up the U.S. border with Mexico. Federal aviation and farming programs face expiration without action.
Many hard-liners have been resisting a leader who voted for the budget deal that McCarthy struck with Biden earlier this year, which set federal spending levels that far-right Republicans don’t agree with and now want to undo. They are pursuing steeper cuts to federal programs and services with next month’s funding deadline.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she wanted assurances the candidates would pursue impeachment inquiries into Biden and other top Cabinet officials.
During the turmoil, the House is now led by a speaker pro tempore, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the bow tie-wearing chairman of the Financial Services Committee. His main job is to elect a more permanent speaker.
Some Republicans — and Democrats — wanted to give McHenry more power to get on with the routine business of governing. But McHenry, the first person to be in the position that was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as an emergency measure, declined to back those overtures. He, too, received a standing ovation.
Umm... Republicans made the rule that any solitary Representative could call for a vote to remove the Speaker. Dems didn't make that rule. In fact, they could have used that rule at any time, but they didn't. Gaetz(R) called to oust the speaker. Why? Because McCarthy cut a deal with Dems where both sides lost stuff to keep the government open -- and then McCarthy BLAMED the Dems for shutting the government down!
Anyway, working with Democrats was too much for Gaetz, so he moved to oust the Speaker. Most Republicans voted to keep McCarthy, but not all. Meanwhile, Democrats were pretty mad that McCarthy blamed them for a crisis they'd helped avert by accepting concessions. So? So they vote against the guy who threw them under the bus, then unite to vote for one of their own, Jeffries, to replace him.
All that is to say that when I hear people blame the Dems -- particularly McCarthy repeatedly saying 'a handful of Republicans worked with Democrats to cause chaos' -- I wonder anyone can think the Dems are to blame. If Republicans were 'working' with Democrats, all they had to do was vote for Jefferies any time in the last 3 weeks and we'd have had a Speaker.
The problem was NO ONE was working with Democrats. Republicans could have peeled off a handful of Democrats by conceding on some points, but the current (R) party has made cooperation a death sentence. Politics should be about stuff like which road to fix first and not all the BS it has become.
It doesn't matter to my argument because Republicans' votes alone wouldn't have ousted McCarthy.
You're blaming the victim. "She wouldn't have been raped if she'd just been nicer." NO.
McCarthy could have saved himself, but wouldn't.
https://www.businessinsider.com/kevin-mccarthy-lost-speakership-cbs-interview-angered-democrats-votes-2023-10
https://time.com/6320202/house-democrats-refused-save-kevin-mccarthy/
How can you blame them for -- when the abusers start in-fighting -- voting to remove an abuser from leadership? How can you blame them for steadfastly voting for a non-abusive leader when the only promise made by the abusive group is that they want to be MORE abusive? The government would have shut down without Democratic help, but the Dems DID help for the sake of the country. Democrats did not create the rule nor make the call to remove McCarthy, but they damned sure had no reason to help any Republicans with all their BS that has nothing to do with moving the country forward and seems solely about posturing for the cameras.
That metaphor is a false equivalence.
If the situation was reversed which Republicans would have been obligated to vote for, say, Pelosi? Because when she had the slimmest of majorities, they all voted McCarthy and left it to her to come up with the votes. That's the gig. Get your party in line if you want to govern. Both sides have had problems with this forever, but this time was the worst.
P.S. "bare" means naked. You wanted "bear", which means endure/carry the weight.
You're saying that Republicans are bad, and I agree with that. What I'm saying: it doesn't make Democrats good.