Mike Emmer, the next question: A frustration for the House Republicans since Kevin McCarthy’s demise and a triumph for his bid to overturn the election
Mr. Emmer’s demise was the latest evidence of the seemingly unending Republican dysfunction. He won an internal party nominating contest by a vote of 118 to 97 over Mr. Johnson.
House Republicans chose and then quickly repudiated yet another of their nominees for speaker on Tuesday and rushed to name a fourth, pressing to put an end to a remarkable three-week-long deadlock that has left Congress leaderless and paralyzed.
Americans and the world are starting to get to know Mike Johnson, now the second in line to the presidency, and it’s a troubling introduction. Donald Trump may not be in the White House, but Trumpism as an institution has transcended the man and provided the operating principles for the House of Representatives and much of the Republican Party.
By Tuesday night, Mr. Johnson appeared to have put together a coalition that would help him capture the speakership, which has been vacant since Kevin McCarthy was deposed. Though it was not certain he had the votes to be elected, he said he planned to call for a floor vote on Wednesday at noon.
“Democracy is messy sometimes, but it is our system,” Mr. Johnson said, standing beside dozens of other Republicans in a show of unity after he was nominated. The majority of Republicans in the House are united.
The selection of Mr. Johnson, 51, was the latest abrupt turn in a chaotic leadership battle among House Republicans in which they have lurched from one speaker nominee to another — first a mainstream conservative, then a far-right rabble rouser, then another mainstream candidate and now another conservative hard-liner — putting their rifts on vivid display.
Mr. Johnson was the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee. He was on the impeachment defence team and worked with Mr. Trump to get House Republicans to sign a legal brief in support of a lawsuit to overturn the election results.
Pressed by reporters on Tuesday night about his efforts to overturn the election, Mr. Johnson smiled and shook his head, saying, “next question,” as Republicans beside him booed.
The House Set to Vote on 4th Republican Speaker Nominee: Why House Republicans Aren’t Listening to the Opposition
Legislation was sponsored last year by Mr. Johnson to bar the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity at any institution that receives federal funds for children younger than 10.
He has also opposed continued funding for the war in Ukraine, which has emerged as a bitter fault line in the G.O.P. and in the spending battles that any new speaker will have to navigate in the coming days.
In a secret-ballot vote on Tuesday night, Mr. Johnson got 128 votes, with 44 Republicans voting for nominees not on the ballot, including 43 for Mr. McCarthy, whom many view as unfairly ousted. A few Republicans indicated they wouldn’t vote for Mr. Johnson, but many Republicans did not show up.
The Republican Party has turned its back on all three of their top leaders the past few weeks. The chamber has been frozen for the better part of a month as Republicans feud over who should be in charge, even as wars rage overseas and a government shutdown approaches.
Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas said that American public can not look at this commentary and have any confidence that the conference can be governed. It is sad. I’m sad. I am very sad.
But immediately after Mr. Emmer’s nomination, about two dozen right-wing Republicans indicated that they would not vote for him on the floor, denying him the majority he would need to succeed in a vote of the full House. He called him a “Globalist RINO” and also met with holdouts to try to win over them.
Dozens of House Republicans have abandoned the old practices of respecting the victor of the party’s internal election and are acting according to their personal preferences, ideologies and loyalties.
Some hard-right Republicans see themselves as a different political party from their more mainstream colleagues, because they accuse them of being in a party with Democrats.
Source: House Set to Vote on 4th Republican Speaker Nominee
The Congress of the House of Representative Mike Johnson and the Battle for a Perfect Speaker: The Three-Week Battle to overturn the Presidential Election
The former president said that Mr. Emmer called Mr. Trump over the weekend to praise him. But Mr. Trump made clear he had not been won over.
An earlier version of the article overstated the number of votes that Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson had in the internal election for Speaker of the House. He got 128 votes, not 129.
The operating principles include allowing Mr. Trump to pick the speaker and elevating one of the election deniers. It was disturbing to watch the slide from Republican speakers like Paul Ryan, who opposed challenges to the election results, to the hemming-and-Huhing of Kevin McCarthy, who supported the anti-democratic stand of Mr. Johnson. And it has certainly been a long slide from the party of Ronald Reagan — whose 11th Commandment was not speaking ill of other Republicans and who envisioned the party as a big tent — to the extremism, purity tests and chaos of the House Republican conference this year.
The three-week battle to choose a House speaker may be over, yet the fallout for the United States and its reputation as a sound government and a beacon of democracy will be long-lasting and profound.
The Republicans in the house voted unanimously for a man who wanted to overturn the presidential election because he didn’t like Donald Trump and because he wanted his political career to continue. A party that once cared deeply about America as the leader of the free world, and believed in the strength, dependability and bipartisan consensus that such a role required, has largely given way to a party now devoted to an extremism that is an active threat to liberal values and American stability.