Will Mike Johnson Cause Problems for the Republicans?

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)

If you'd asked me a year ago who Mike Johnson was, I'd say the handsome dad of a guy I went to high school with (note, I went to high school in rural Minnesota-they are not the same man).  I watch politics religiously, and I wouldn't have known who Mike Johnson was...and he is now two heartbeats away from the presidency with his recent election to the Speaker's podium in the US House of Representatives.

There are a lot of things to discuss here, and I'm going to touch on a couple before I get to the point.  This was wildly embarrassing for the Republican Party, there's no doubt about it-the way that Johnson was chosen after most of the rest of their leadership (Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, & Tom Emmer) all chose to decline is insanity.  You have to wonder if you're any of these four men what your next move is.  I would imagine McCarthy lets Johnson settle a little bit before he retires (I can't imagine him wanting to stick around in the way Pelosi has), but Scalise, Jordan, & Emmer...do they have the gusto to stay on knowing they'll likely never be Speaker after this?

In general, I have to assume that retirements will be an issue in the coming weeks.  In the past two weeks, both Reps. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) and John Sarbanes (D-MD) announced they will retire, and I predict more are on the way.  Both Lesko & Sarbanes represent districts that are safe for their party, but if Republican moderates in Biden districts start to think that this is as good as it gets (or they could be headed to defeat next year), I'd imagine they'll leave as well which will have more impact next year.  Watch for a few names, specifically people like Don Bacon or Ken Calvert on retirement watch before the end of the year.

But the bigger thing I want to talk about here is the impact this race has on 2024.  Ultimately, I think that it'll be relatively minimal, though it has to be said that the Republicans did not improve their position here.  My gut says that the Freedom Caucus gives Johnson a wide enough berth (particularly given his close alignment with former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination next year) that he stays on until at least November 2024 as the Republican leader.  I think the impact of the past few weeks will hurt the Republican brand, but ultimately will be difficult to point to if Republicans lose next year.  Certainly a lot of Democrats have (hopefully) taken the past few weeks to fundraise off of this, particularly those Democrats who are running against Biden-district Republicans who backed Jim Jordan (like Young Kim or Brian Fitzpatrick), but I don't think that the last few weeks will hurt them in the general as much as the Biden-Trump race will.

That being said, Mike Johnson is a problem for the GOP.  For decades, both parties ran against Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi, and the impact of running against them was, quite minimal.  This is because Gingrich was largely aligned with Republicans-if you liked one, you might not love the other, but you aren't turned off by them (same with Pelosi & Democrats).  Republicans lost in 1998 because of some of Gingrich's actions (overreaching on the Clinton impeachment) and again, in 2010 Democrats lost because of Pelosi's actions (passing the Affordable Care Act), but in both cases they did so with huge swaths of support from their caucus-it wasn't Pelosi or Gingrich, it was the letter behind their names that was causing the issue.

Speakers Nancy Pelosi & Paul Ryan

The only Speaker in recent memory who has had a marked difference from their party on basic orthodoxy is Paul Ryan.  Ryan's views on tax reform and social entitlement reforms (Medicare & Social Security) were counter to that of Donald Trump, and underscored by Democrats in a way that they didn't go after Dennis Hastert or Mitch McConnell.  Namely because-they were insanely unpopular.  This is actually a more commonplace view in the Republican Party that you'd think (Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, & Tim Scott have all run on increasing the social security age, for example), but it tests poorly, and linking a "vote for Ryan" as a "vote to cut Medicare" is something that hadn't really been done before.  Whether it was successful is hard to tell, primarily because it was in the wake of the Trump presidency which sucked all other oxygen from the room.

But you can imagine that this will be something Democrats will try with Mike Johnson.  Johnson, like Ryan, has said that "cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid...need to happen yesterday" which is definitely coming to campaign commercials next year.  But his views on other issues are also going to be tough for Republicans to defend.  He has stated he supports a national abortion ban, something that Trump definitely wants to keep out of the press given it's widely popular (and responsible for Democrats over-performing in the midterms, as well as special elections across the country), but Johnson's comments go further, claiming that abortion "reduces the work force" and has blamed abortion for school shootings.  These are certainly outside of the commonplace Republican mainstream (you wouldn't catch Mitch McConnell blaming a school shooting on abortion).

The same is true for other issues, but perhaps none more so than LGBT rights.  Johnson has referred to gay people as "unnatural," "sinful," and part of a "dangerous lifestyle," saying that queer people are akin to pedophiles.  He has supported efforts to make homosexuality a criminal offense, and is against gay marriage.  His wife runs a counseling service that compares being gay to "bestiality" and "incest."  These are, even for the Republican Party, pretty extreme viewpoints, and ones that Republicans like Mike Lawler, Don Bacon, & Brian Fitzpatrick just welcomed as their leadership.  This is the problem with electing someone that is not well-known to leadership-they haven't been properly vetted, and there isn't time to squeeze out what might be an anvil for the Republicans who now have to defend them.  We saw this in 2008 when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running-mate.

It is not clear that Mike Johnson will cost Republicans in 2024, but this gives the Democrats an opening.  It is very clear that the Democratic brand is more popular than Joe Biden, and the best option Biden has is to run against Trump & Trump extremism.  Johnson, who was a principle congressional supporter of the 2020 election steal that Trump attempted, is now a second option for Biden to run against-showing that, "even if you don't like us...do you dare trust the other side with this much power?"  In 2020, House Republicans in blue/purple districts were able to distance themselves from Trump by saying they were different.  With Mike Johnson as their leader, they just made that a lot harder.