Mike Johnson becomes the speaker of the whole House. For now.
WASHINGTON — The notion that the speaker serves the whole House is often tossed around but is rarely the case.
While the position is established in the Constitution and under longstanding House rules entails presiding over the entire institution, the speaker has historically played a highly political role, installed by the majority party to ruthlessly execute its will and legislative agenda. But circumstances have changed.
Rep. Mike Johnson can now, for better or worse, truly lay claim to being speaker of the whole House, after Democrats saved him from a Republican-led coup Wednesday in another remarkable moment in a chaotic Congress filled with them. Had Democrats not come to his rescue, the votes existed in his own party to potentially oust him.
It was the logical outcome of a session in which House Democrats, despite being in the minority, have repeatedly supplied the votes and even the procedural backing to do most of the heavy legislative lifting to stave off default, fund the government and aid U.S. allies, forming an uneasy coalition government with more mainstream Republicans.
The result left Mr. Johnson, RLa., who is still new to the job, indebted to Democrats even as he immediately sought to distance himself from them by emphasizing his deep conservative credentials. Democrats said their support for him underscored their bona fides as the grown-up party willing to go so far as to back a conservative Republican speaker to prevent the House from again going off the rails.
Now the two parties will have to navigate this previously unexplored terrain as they head into an election season that will determine who is speaker next year.
The reality is that after passing the foreign aid package including funding for Ukraine that prompted the push by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to depose Mr. Johnson, little polarizing legislative work remains to be done this Congress, while the fight for House control is about to get into full swing.
That fact led Mr. Johnson to walk off the House floor to highfives from his Republican supporters and quickly try to remind his colleagues and America that, despite the decisive Democratic assist, he is still a die-hard rightwinger.
“I am a lifelong, movement, conservative Republican, and I intend to continue to govern in accordance with those core principles,” Mr. Johnson declared.
It is no secret on Capitol Hill that many Republicans believe the speaker will have a hard time remaining in the top party job next year — if he can make it through this year — no matter what happens in the election. And the fact that he now has a patina of Democratic backing is unlikely to help him make his case that he deserves to retain the gavel if Republicans triumph in November, or to serve as the minority leader should Democrats win control.
Since the Ukraine vote last month, he has been working furiously to display his deep conservatism, railing against pro-Palestinian campus protests, assailing Biden administration policy on the war in the Gaza Strip and suggesting without evidence that immigrants living in the country without legal permission vote in U.S. elections.
But his efforts are unlikely to persuade some of his more obstreperous right-wing colleagues, who portray Mr. Johnson as speaker of the “uniparty” that reigns over the Washington swamp and is abhorred by their constituents.
“The Democrats validated him,” Ms. Greene said after the vote. “That is the most terrifying thing to our constituents and to the American people.”
Just 10 other Republicans joined her in voting Wednesday to keep the ouster effort alive, underscoring once again the ability of a tiny sliver of hardright lawmakers to wreak havoc in a House their party governs by a slim margin.
This was not an easy vote for Democrats, siding with a man who holds contrary views on some of their most deeply held policy beliefs. Thirty-two of them opposed the successful bipartisan effort to kill the motion to vacate the speaker’s chair; another seven voted “present,” unable to bring themselves to back him but also unwilling to throw in with the right-wing rebels.
But Democratic leaders had made it clear weeks ago that the trade would be a price they were willing to pay for pushing through the assistance for Ukraine. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y. and the minority leader, signaled to Mr. Johnson, at first obliquely and then explicitly, that Democrats would have his back if he put the foreign aid package on the floor.
They stuck to that bargain — and regarded it as an added bonus that they were able to stick it to Ms. Greene in the process.
Democrats also calculated that their willingness to spare the House another unsightly spectacle of extended tumult would bolster their political case before the November elections, proving that they are the responsible party. While they may have saved Mr. Johnson, they believe the fact that they even had to do so shows that he and an ungovernable Republican majority need to be relegated back to the minority.
Democrats don’t intend to be supporting a Republican for speaker in 2025.
“As long as House Republicans continue to peddle chaos, dysfunction and extremism, and as long as House Democrats continue to solve problems for everyday Americans and deliver real results, then the American people are going to vacate the extreme MAGA Republican majority in November,” Mr. Jeffries said after Wednesday’s vote.
And there is no guarantee that Democrats would come to Mr. Johnson’s aid again if another move is made against him. Their backing Wednesday was linked directly to the Ukraine aid. They would no doubt demand further concessions if another fight over the speakership ensued — concessions Mr. Johnson would find hard to give.
“This is a one-time getout-of-jail-free card,” said progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who opposed the rescue. “This is not a continued thing. And if we’re going to be in a situation where Marjorie Taylor Greene puts forward more motions to vacate, then we need to be getting something.”
Whether Ms. Greene or another Republican will try again is unclear. And while Mr. Johnson had the benefit of former President Donald Trump saying the motion to vacate was ill-timed, Mr. Trump’s backing also appeared conditional.
“We’re not in a position of voting on a motion to vacate,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on social media that he released only after it was clear Mr. Johnson was safe. “At some point we may very well be.”
Mr. Johnson said he hoped Wednesday’s vote was the “end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the undertaking.” It may be for now.
But the speaker is certain to continue to face challenges to his leadership both from Democrats who rescued him but want to depose him on their own in the elections and from Republicans who see him as weakened and vulnerable and might seek a change at the top after November.