House Speaker

There’s a nickname for House Speaker Mike Johnson shared among some Hill staffers and observers: “Deacon Mike,” a nod to his quiet Southern Baptist religious demeanor. But it also contains the idea that he is a man elevated beyond his expected station, charged with the monumental task of wrangling an extremely thin Republican House majority when he should rightly be in charge of keeping the worship center donuts fresh and the coffee hot.

The Florida Man had a plan. It was obvious from the beginning, but this being Washington, despite all the bizarre outcomes of the post-Cold War political scene — interns, scandals, impeachments, Donald Trump in the White House and out of it, the Cheneys surrounded by cheering Democrats — normalcy remains the assumed status quo. Normalcy does not encompass a plan to vacate the speaker’s chair with the unanimous help of the other party. In fact, prior to 2019, anyone could have used the same tool the Florida Man would deploy to unseat a speaker. They just never tried it officially, because to do so would be crazy, risking handing control of the House to the minority. And it was that audacity which kept the Florida Man’s plan alive.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where after three long weeks, the Republicans in the House finally found their path toward a speaker — and boy is it a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto of a choice. Louisiana’s Mike Johnson, known for his kinglike dominance of the green line meme, is your new speaker of the House. He is eminently difficult to categorize, a cipher, an ardent social conservative with little in the way of fiscal conservative instincts but with a lot in favor of Zionist support for Israel. If you are a Squad member, this guy’s your nightmare. But he’s also likely to drive the media crazy, because he’s basically an unupdated social conservative from 2004. Perhaps not exactly what the Democrats had in mind when they helped Matt Gaetz knife Kevin McCarthy.

After the US House stole the spotlight last week, sources on the Hill say a similar, yet more “behind-closed-doors” brouhaha is brewing within the Senate. In the face of a government shutdown, conservatives have been in “constant” cross-chamber communication. For instance, when the Schumer-McConnell bill, with its $6 billion of funding for Ukraine, was on the table the weekend before last, Senate Republicans were apprised that House Democrats were filibustering to get it passed. As the House convened on Saturday September 30, and the Senate convened at noon for a 1 p.m.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where for once the number one story in the political world barely involves Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Instead, the only story anyone’s talking about revolves around Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz, and an act of political assassination that saw eight Republicans cross party lines to join with unanimous Democrats to lop off the head of the party’s speaker and greatest fundraiser. McCarthy as Ned Stark and Gaetz as Joffrey doesn’t track, exactly, since the boy from Bakersfield wanted that job and gave up enormous leverage to get it — but from the moment Gaetz brought the motion, people in Washington assumed that McCarthy would cut a deal with Democrats to survive. But that proved a bridge too far.

Kevin McCarthy rose to the speakership despite being loathed by a lot of very online conservatives and a rump portion of his own party in the House. He had to win that role across multiple votes, which the media pronounced as humiliating, indicative of a GOP incapable of governing and all the normal tropes that partisans such as Jake Tapper deploy in place of real informed analysis of the situation. This is why they’ve proven to be so utterly wrong about McCarthy’s strength as a leader since taking the gavel.