Representative Mike Johnson (R., La.), the fourth House Republican to be nominated for the speakership this month, secured the necessary 217 votes to be elected to the post on Wednesday afternoon, ending weeks of uncertainty within the caucus.
In a Wednesday afternoon election against Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), whom Democrats unanimously rallied behind, Johnson garnered 220 votes compared to his competitor’s 209 votes.
The Republican speaker nominee became the fourth contestant in the running against Jeffries hours after Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R., Minn.) dropped his bid Tuesday afternoon. House Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.), the two previous nominees for the presiding-officer role, also failed to secure enough support from their party.
Since Representative Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) was removed from the speakership over three weeks ago, the GOP conference repeatedly struggled to unite behind a candidate that could meet or surpass the 217-vote threshold. There are only 221 Republicans in the lower chamber, meaning each candidate couldn’t afford to lose more than four votes. Johnson only lost one.
And that one wasn’t against him, it was because Rep. Derrick Van Orden was absent.
Compared to some, Johnson is pretty low profile, and I didn’t already have a tag for him. He has a 90% Heritage Action rating, which isn’t too bad (though he did vote for the debt limit raise this year). Johnson is also a Trump supporter, which no doubt will irk National Review to no end. At 51, he’s relatively young for a speaker (though Paul Ryan was 45).
Mood: Cautious optimism.
Tags: Hakeem Jeffries, House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, Republicans
(From Ace of Spades)
-Pro Life
-America First
-Opposes sending unaccounted billions to Ukraine.
-Opposes mutilation of children
-Served on the Judiciary Committee and Armed Services Committee
-Former Chair of Republican Study Committee
-Constitutional Lawyer
-Married 24 years, father to four
-Liz Cheney doesn’t like Mike.
-Communists can’t stand him.
Why the hell didn’t they run this guy for speaker first!
To borrow a slogan from the 1952 Presidential campaign: I like (m)Ike!
My standards were a bit lower:
– Live human being
– Republican member of the House of Representatives
– The other Republican members of the House were all willing to vote for him as Speaker
So I support Mike Johnson’s speakership, too.
You ought to see this man’s statement that the police murdered St Floyd, of the recreation holy pharmaceuticals. You have to be stupid or a member of the sqamp.
I’ll reserve judgement. But I am not polishing this man’s halo. In fact in a year I’ll bet he is revealed to be another Tray Gowdey or Bonior.
[…] Havana’s Cortinas ‘castle’ converted into military zone and beggar’s refuge BattleSwarm: Our Short National Non-Nightmare Is Finally Over: Rep. Mike Johnson Elected Speaker Behind The Black: Boeing losses total almost a billion dollars this quarter, Red China launches new […]
“Why the hell didn’t they run this guy for speaker first!”
He’s a three term Congressman, so per GOP tradition he had to “Wait His Turn”.
From an administrative position, he was about #8-9 in the GOP House Leadership line. So basically he eventually leapt over about 3 others ‘ahead’ of him in line.
I strongly suspect a whole bunch of people took a good, long look around and asked themselves, “Who do we have who could probably 1) do the job, 2) would take the job, and 3) doesn’t already have a ton of enemies inside the caucus.
@James Cavell,
Could be that he never looked into it. Given some of the outrageous crap that I’ve seen the cops do, these last few years, I’d accept the conventional wisdom RE: The Sainted George Floyd if I hadn’t actually looked into it all. Which led me to conclude that Floyd committed suicide by opiates…
I think Derek Chauvin should have sued the Minneapolis Police Department for how they trained him, because everything he did was (from what I’ve researched, at least…) in accordance with department training and policies. That Floyd died, and he got the blame? Their damn fault, because they essentially mandated that “excited delirium” response by department members.
Raw fact is that Minneapolis PD is supervised by Democratic Party politicians. They should be held accountable for how that department was and is run; that they are not, and somehow manage to ju-jitsu all that “police repression and abuse” into political benefit for themselves? Unconscionable. I don’t know how the hell they get away with it, but we let them.
Every major city in the US is predominantly run by Democrats. All of them have “police issues”; so why is it that those police issues aren’t ever laid off on the Democratic Party politicians that run those cities…?
I’ve been having fun on Twitter mocking some of hte people who were running around with their hair on fire crying abotu how Gaetz had gotten rid of McCarthy “without a plan for the future!!11!”
The plan for the future, I’ve been telling them, was this:
McCarthy got elected Speaker on the promise of “no CRs”
Then when it came time to hold to that promise, he essentially said “F you, I lied”, and joined up with Democrats to ram through a CR over 90 GOP no votes
The “plan for the future” was: if you lie to us, you get fired
Which IMO is a perfectly valid plan
So, now we have a more conservative Speaker than McCarthy and a marker placed down that “if you make a promise to conservatives, you either keep it, or you lose your position”.
I’m not seeign the problem here