Mike Johnson is the speaker of the House today for one main reason: Predecessor Kevin McCarthy simply could not master the job.
In recent weeks, and with increasing confidence in the past few days, the new speaker has passed an early test: He’s demonstrated that Mike Johnson is no Kevin McCarthy.
He is not someone who GOP politicians can torment with impunity. He has aligned himself with former President Donald Trump — indispensable for a Republican in his position — while not being treated like a golden retriever, as Trump did with “my Kevin.” He is disliked by Democrats, naturally, but not generally held in abject contempt.
He, in short, is not a Washington joke — or at least not as much of one as seemed possible when he took the speaker’s gavel almost by accident, the political equivalent of Forrest Gump.
“The reality is, in the last month-plus … he’s been able to get the job done despite all of the efforts to undermine him,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said. “He’s doing an effective job as speaker and building consensus both within the conference and navigating a divided government.”
One reason Johnson is passing his early leadership test is that it’s being graded on a curve. The speaker is hassled by the same unruly forces that harried McCarthy for nine months in 2023 before hounding him out of office in October. Few people will be surprised if, in due course, Johnson’s antlers also hang on the wall of the right-wing rec room.
At a minimum, however, Johnson has fortified his reputation in consequential ways. Substantively, Johnson is an authentic movement conservative in a way that McCarthy never was, while pushing much the same agenda and seeking the same sort of compromises: deals on federal spending, foreign assistance and surveillance — all of which provoke the right.
But Johnson has been successful in isolating his critics in a way McCarthy never could. He brushed off threats to oust him from the speakership and casually dismissed one of the loudest voices, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), as an unserious lawmaker. He appears to have convinced Greene to retreat from her threats to force a vote on Johnson’s speakership (for now, at least) without allowing any real concessions. Their talks, he told reporters, were “not a negotiation,” with her requests to be “processed” in due course.
And on Tuesday, Johnson made plain he expects to continue leading Republicans after the November election —…
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