Republicans have at long last elected a House speaker: Representative Mike Johnson, a fundamentalist Christian who was also once called a key “architect” in Congress’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.
Johnson finally secured the speaker’s gavel after Republican infighting left the House without a speaker for 22 days. He secured 220 votes.
Johnson is a four-term congressman representing Louisiana. His win also represents the rise of the MAGA front in the Republican Party. Earlier Wednesday morning, Donald Trump endorsed Johnson as House speaker—after quickly killing Mike Emmer’s nomination the day before.
I’m betting on this guy not lasting until November 2024 (not sure what the over/under is on November 17, 2023).
How do you think he’ll get removed? It took them this long to agree on someone to elect, it seems unlikely enough of them would agree to remove him. They could maybe get the Democrats along with a small subset of Republicans to vote him out like the last time, but I’m not sure the Democrats would be up for that. Maybe if they wait until right before the election, but I can’t imagine the GOP being dumb enough to oust the speaker right before elections happen (although that does raise the question of who certifies the election if there’s no speaker. I’m assuming the speaker pro tem?).
Yeah, this is the guy the MAGAs could support. The little rebellion is over, and they got what they wanted.
Via the same rule through which McCarthy was removed. After years of a Motion to Vacate the speakership requiring much more than a single vote, the GOP demanded that it be reverted to an older, single vote rule before McCarthy would be considered for speaker. This is before the first vote was ever cast, and that rule still stands. It was written into the 118th Congress rules and has not been rescinded.
In other words, the GOP can do this over and over and over again, as many times as they get a call from Putin to do so. They can oust any and every speaker at will, keeping Congress at a standstill and the government in chaos as long as they can get a simple
GOPmajority vote.But they won’t have to, because this asshole is one of the Rs that voted against the continuing resolution that is the only thing keeping government open right now. When that 45-day clock runs out in November, the new Speaker is going to stonewall just like he did before, and will likely keep his seat throughout any government shutdown he succeeds in creating.
They don’t need a GOP majority vote. They need a house majority vote. And unless dems have some compelling reason to keep the republican speaker (unlikely), it only takes a handful from the GOP to oust the speaker. I think McCarthy only lost 8 republican votes.
Quite right. Thank you for the correction.
The only possible chance the democrats don’t collectively vote him out, given the chance, is if the budget hasn’t gone through yet. Otherwise, they will take any call to eject the speaker as an opportunity to oust him.
I tend to agree, but let’s remember that Republicans ousted McCarthy, it only took one member requesting to call for a vote, and they had had a giant number of votes to get him in initially. Those maga Republicans are nutty, I wouldn’t count on them not getting pissed off and trying to break all the toys again.