How Mike Johnson won the gavel after weeks of Republican agony

The Republicans’ long national nightmare is over.

After three weeks of anger and frustration, every member of the House GOP united behind Mike Johnson, a strongly pro-Trump lawmaker from Louisiana. America now has a speaker.

My take: It was sheer exhaustion. The GOP needed to stop the madness. Some speaker, any speaker, was better than none.

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While Johnson is firmly in the conservative camp, he hasn’t been in Congress long enough to make many enemies.  

It was easy to make fun of the speakerless House Republicans for their ongoing fiasco, but there’s a deeper meaning here as well.

The media have had a field day calling the three-week travesty a clown show – Republicans themselves have used harsher words – that paralyzed the House. It was like two teenagers playing ping pong in which each player keeps crushing the ball to keep the other guy from winning.

Representative Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, speaks after becoming US House speaker in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In the you-can’t-make-this-up department, even after booting Kevin McCarthy and knocking down Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, the House GOP nominated its No. 3 official Tom Emmer as the next speaker–and he withdrew four hours later. This is craziness on fast-forward.

Then the lawmakers turned around and granted their fourth nomination to the little-known Johnson, a lawyer and onetime radio host who had just lost out to Emmer.

The difference here: Donald Trump. Since Emmer had committed the cardinal sin of voting to confirm Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, Trump denounced him as a "Globalist RINO" and later told allies he had "killed" his candidacy. (Some members also opposed Emmer’s stance on supporting same-sex marriage and backing aid to Ukraine.)

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Johnson, by contrast, not only helped lead the opposition to Biden’s certification, he served on Trump’s legal defense team during an impeachment trial. And Trump gave Johnson his stamp of approval.

There was a telling moment late Tuesday after Johnson won the secret ballot. An ABC reporter asked a perfectly legitimate question about his view of the last election as stolen. The assembled Republicans started booing – one woman shouted "shut up, shut up" – and Johnson didn’t answer the question. When he spoke outside the Capitol the next day, he took no questions.

Johnson emerged so quickly that the media did not have an opportunity to vet him, but that is already under way. "The Far Right Gets Its Man of the House," said a New York Times headline just hours later.

US. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Mike Johnson (R-LA), Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Daniel Webster (R-FL) listen as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks at a news conference after the House passed H.R.2 - the Secure the Border Act of 2023 at the Capitol, May 11, 2023, in Washington, DC. The Republican-led bill increases spending for security at the southern border through the hiring of additional Border Patrol agents, upgrading existing technology and resuming construction of the southern border wall.  (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Democrats were quick to criticize the new speaker for his stance against gay rights and aid to Ukraine.

For 21 days, Republicans were acutely aware they were embarrassing themselves, but this is not just about petty feuds and infighting, such as Matt Gaetz’s personal grudge against McCarthy.

Keep in mind that McCarthy lost his post for striking a deal with Democrats to avoid a debt-ceiling default, and again with a stopgap measure to avert a government shutdown.

WASHINGTON - OCTOBER 24: House Speaker nominee Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks beside fellow members after being nominated for House Speaker, inside the Longworth House Office Building at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, October 24, 2023.  (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The hard-line rebels want deeper spending cuts, a perfectly reasonable position to take. The problem is they are a minority within the only branch of government controlled by the GOP. 

They can’t get anything done without working with the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House. And if that means a default or federal shutdown, so be it.

The hard-liners prefer gridlock, it seems, to any hint of compromise. Working with Democrats in any way is deemed a betrayal. But they had enough votes to block their party from doing something as basic as electing a leader.

In short, the rebels don’t seem interested in governing.

Both parties have their extremists, of course. But the Democrats seem better able to hold theirs at bay. 

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The moderate conservatives, often derided as squishes, have clout in numbers too. They were determined to block any hard-line right-winger from the speaker’s office, worried that the absence of governing could cost them their seats. But they decided that Johnson was someone they could live with.

The route to political influence is no longer by patiently rising through the party ranks. By staging stunts, making inflammatory comments and building their social media following, aspiring lawmakers can raise a ton of dough, get themselves on TV and become celebrities.

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Johnson doesn’t fit that mold. One encouraging note: He spoke yesterday of forming a bipartisan commission on budgetary matters, which suggests a willingness to work with that other party. 

Howard Kurtz is the host of FOX News Channel's MediaBuzz (Sundays 11 a.m.-12 p.m. ET). Based in Washington, D.C., he joined the network in July 2013 and regularly appears on Special Report with Bret Baier and other programs.