A Dangerous Fifth-String Evangelical Republican Speaker

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to reporters before a House Republican candidates forum on Capitol Hill on Oct. 24, 2023. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/via Getty Images

The House voted to elect staunch Conservative Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) as its new speaker on Wednesday. Johnson, who served as vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, was the GOP’s fourth nominee for the speakership, which made him the Republican Party’s fifth, and essentially last, option.

Given the first round of voting for Johnson on Wednesday, you would never imagine that the Republican Party had spent the last three weeks in utter turmoil over who they would be able to elect to lead them. The vote was smooth — too smooth to measure the ongoing chaos caused by hard-liners within the GOP, and too smooth to properly reflect the danger Johnson will pose in successfully championing a Conservative Evangelical agenda.

US Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, shakes hands with Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), right, as the House of Representatives holds an election for a new speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 25, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/via Getty Images)

Mike Johnson, age 51, is the first member of his family to attend college, and was first elected to the US Congress in 2016. He is lawyer with a twenty-year background in Constitutional Law, and formerly served as Chairman of the Conservative Republican Study Committee. He has never led a powerful committee in Congress or served in the top tier of House leadership, but he did possess three things necessary to win this latest impossible election: a continued allegiance to Donald Trump’s plan to illegally retain power; an ability to fly under the radar in a way that is not threatening to others in power; and a colloquial affability that makes him generally liked by many in his party.

Mike Johnson is extremely savvy in his attempts to aid the Republican Party with continuing to sell the false proposition that the 2020 election was somehow rigged. Making a point to work in the background, where he was able to maneuver his expert legal ability, Johnson led the real fight, instigated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, by calling on the United States Supreme Court to delay the electoral vote in four swing states that Biden definitively won: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.