Donald Trump is dead right GOP must back Mike Johnson for speaker
President-elect Donald Trump is bang on the money: House Speaker Mike Johnson “will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN.Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement.”House Republicans need to do the right thing and line up behind the Louisianan in his re-election fight on Jan.
3. Why? Well, for a start, Johnson’s good at the job.Taking over as the least-experienced speaker since 1883, and with one of the narrowest House majorities ever, he’s been disciplined and steady, taking wins where he can and cutting losses where he must.He’s fought the good fight on strategic competition with China and provided key support for Israel; he also did the right thing by allowing the vote to oust Rep.
George Santos even though it further narrowed the GOP majority and so inevitably made the speaker’s job even tougher.Second, the alternative is chaos — and potentially even the emergence of a Democratic speaker.Remember, after GOP malcontents engineered the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October 2023, it took the Republican conference weeks to settle on a successor, as multiple other, more senior candidates failed. The nation can’t afford a similar interregnum now: It would risk derailing what should be Congress’ pro-forma ratification of the Electoral College vote to install Donald Trump as our next president, since the House couldn’t fulfill its role in that process if it lacks an elected speaker.Plus, if Republicans simply can’t agree on a new speaker, desperate moderates might defect to put a Dem in the job.
With just 219 GOP votes to Democrats’ 215 in the new House, Johnson’s going to need the support of almost every Republican member, including most of the eccentrics who joined in ousting McCarthy. So Trump’s support is key: The disgruntled crew mainly claim to be loyal to him.The new prez is coming into office with an ambitious and urgent agenda; as Trump himself says, “common sense” dictates retaining Johnson as speaker.
...