The U.S. House is now led by an election denier extraordinaire

 

Mike Johnson is smart, friendly, very conservative. He also tried helping Trump overturn the 2020 vote

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana secured enough votes to be elected U.S. House Speaker on Wednesday, as Republicans eagerly elevated the little-known conservative and ended, for now, the political chaos in their majority.

Attempting to help Donald Trump overturn an election is not a firing offence in the modern Republican Party.

In fact, it can land you a promotion.

The new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was not only one of the most important allies in the former president's attempt to cancel the 2020 election result; he also called the vote rigged and spread crackpot conspiracy theories about communist-controlled voting machines.

Yet Mike Johnson received unanimous support from Republicans in a 220-209 vote on Wednesday, ending an impasse that had paralyzed one-half of the U.S. Congress for nearly a month.

It's a dizzying ascendancy for the youthful six-year congressman from Louisiana, a career constitutional lawyer known as bright and amiable.

That's one thing his friends and foes agree on: Johnson is smart and likable.

The ouster of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker led to weeks of in-fighting among congressional Republicans and failed or fizzled bids for the job by Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer.

"A very pleasant demeanour," is how top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries described him, while cautioning that he's also extremely right wing.

 

"A friend of all, and enemy to none," is how senior Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik described him. "Above all else, Mike is kind."

 

That gentlemanly manner was on display the instant Johnson took up the gavel. In a gracious address, he began by speaking directly to the Democratic leader. 

 

The parties may see the world differently, Johnson said, but he vouched for Jeffries's love for the country and vowed to work constructively together: "We're going to find common ground," he said. 

 

That's where the amity ends. 

Johnson's rise is a reflection of a bitterly polarized politics. A day earlier, Republicans seemed on the verge of selecting a relative moderate, Tom Emmer — backer of same-sex marriage, supporter of funding Ukraine, and a soft-red conservative who, it's worth noting, voted to certify the 2020 election.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump, seen here during a break on Wednesday from his civil fraud trial in New York, took credit for Johnson's election as Speaker

The party base revolted. And Trump delivered the coup de grace Tuesday, with a scathing statement that killed Emmer's bid.

 

By Wednesday afternoon, Republicans had rallied behind an anti-Emmer. 

'Damn right'

A ruby-red conservative, Johnson is a repeated opponent of Ukraine aid, he frequently sponsors anti-abortion bills and he fought in court against same-sex marriage in his previous life as a lawyer for a Christian advocacy group.

 

He's no run-of-the-mill opponent of same-sex marriage, either. In newspaper columns many years ago, he referred to gay sex as deviate behaviour, calling it unnatural and dangerous, and said states would have a legitimate right to criminalize it on health grounds.

 

And, importantly, he worked, on behalf of Trump, to assemble colleagues' signatures for a legal challenge against the 2020 election result. Johnson appeared to exert some pressure, telling them the then-president was eagerly waiting to see the list of signatories.

He later insisted he wasn't trying to intimidate colleagues. He said he regretted his choice of words. Yet Johnson has referred to the election as fixed, and has repeated the sorts of canards about voting machines that resulted in a $787 million US defamation payout by Fox News.

And that was it. Somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of Republican voters think the 2020 election was illegitimate, and there's little political incentive for members in solid right-wing districts, meaning most Republicans, to say otherwise.

 

Here's something Johnson had in common with his peers: Most of the speakership candidates had voted against certifying the election, as had the last Speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

 

son differed from most was in the effort and intellectual brainpower he dedicated to it. 

His promotion on Wednesday was celebrated by none other than Trump. In fact, the former president took credit for it, referring to his own actions aimed at torpedoing Emmer and elevating Johnson.

"At this time yesterday, nobody was thinking of Mike," Trump said. "Then we put out the word. And now he's the Speaker of the House."

 

Trump added: "He's going to make us all proud."

 

To be fair, Trump's track record as kingmaker is imperfect. He'd tried to elevate Jordan and fell short.

 

Some Republicans refrained from backing Jordan, who was a louder backer of Trump's election lies. His voting record was also a shade more conservative than Johnson's.

 

For context, different voting scorecards rank Johnson within the top quarter of Republican members for their conservatism, putting him slightly to the right of McCarthy, but less so than Jordan.