After a Year of ‘Juggling Flaming Chainsaws,’ What Will the Election Mean for Johnson?
If there’s one thing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) must love about the last three months of campaigning, it’s that the drama of the House is (at least temporarily) on the backburner. While a 240-city tour is no picnic, it’s a different kind of exhaustion than the constant infighting the Louisianan has become accustomed to. Asked what will happen to him if Republicans lose big next week, the 52-year-old replies simply. “Truthfully, I haven’t considered that, because I am 100% focused on the job at hand,” he told NBC News during his rigorous 40-state trip.
Despite all of the background noise about Johnson’s future, the dad of four says he “genuinely believe[s] that we are going to win, [and] I’m going to be speaker of the House.” Frankly, he told reporters, “I haven’t devoted one moment of thought to the alternative.” Nor has he had time to in his record-breaking fundraising quest. But there is life after November 5, and plenty of Republicans are weighing in on whether it should include Johnson at the helm.
“I think he got a good shot at it,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said. “Obviously, in a tight majority, there’s people probably playing some games with the speakership,” he pointed out. “I think the majority of members are happy with what he’s doing. I mean, he’s got the toughest job in Washington, D.C., right now, and he’s trying to navigate it.”
Acknowledging the party’s loud detractors, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.) was blunt about the challenges the young attorney has faced. “Mike has been juggling flaming chainsaws since he was elected to the speakership and has helped this conference move forward.”
To be fair, America hasn’t really seen what kind of speaker Johnson could be with the leverage of a more robust majority. Instead, he’s had to spend most of his time trying to balance the House’s harsh political realities with his party’s unbendable demands. If the GOP sweeps the House and Senate, Johnson is confident that “you will certainly have a lot less dissension in the ranks on our side.” Governing, he insists, “is going to be a whole lot easier come January.”
Others are expecting a “drag-out dogfight” for the top post, whether it’s the House minority leader or speaker. “He’s burned a lot” of goodwill, one of Johnson’s most public critics, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), insisted. “I think it would take major resuscitation from [Donald] Trump or something to get him over the finish line.”
But there are plenty of party voices in the Louisianan’s corner — including one man who knows the difficulty of the job firsthand. “Of course, no speaker is perfect,” Newt Gingrich conceded, “and Speaker Johnson would be the first to own up his limitations.” But, he observed, “as a former Speaker of the House, I assure you that all the critics who want Speaker Johnson to ‘hold the line’ or ‘be tougher’ with Democrats have never been in House leadership. They have no grasp of how complicated the speakership truly is.” And those who mock him for his faith, Gingrich warns, “remember that his devotion makes it almost impossible to intimidate him.”
For now, the speaker’s eye is firmly on next Tuesday, where he thinks the energy and enthusiasm he’s seeing out in the country will translate into “a big night” for Republicans. But people need to understand, he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, “We’re no longer in a contest just between Republicans versus Democrats. I mean, it is that, but it’s much deeper than that. This is between two completely different visions for who we are as a nation and who we’re going to be.”
Unlike Democrats, Johnson emphasized, “We are trying to conserve the founding principles of the country, our Judeo-Christian foundations, and then the principles that emanate from that, things like individual freedom and limited government and the rule of law and peace through strength and fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity, secure borders. I mean, all these ideas are in jeopardy right now. If we retake the House, the Senate, and the White House — that’s unified government — you’re going to see a very aggressive first 100 days agenda to go back to the fundamentals.”
For starters, he explained, “We’ll secure the border on day one. We will get the economy going again by reducing taxes, making the tax cuts permanent from the first Trump administration, and then taking a blowtorch to the regulatory state. The government is too big; it’s too powerful. It’s crushing the free market. We will move that out of the way. We’ll go to energy policy, which is directly related to our national security policy, and we will turn the spigots back on to use our God-given resources in a responsible manner to grow our strength as a nation. The economy will work again. The pathway out of poverty will be broadened for more people, which leads to human flourishing. These are the ideas and the principles that we will be advancing. We’ve already done it in the past,” Johnson reminded listeners. “We will do it again.”
But, if Kamala Harris’s party wins and the Left is in charge, “you’ll get exactly the opposite of everything I just summarized,” he warned. “They will grow government. They will try to do giveaways. It will be socialism on steroids because they’re Marxist by ideology, and they’re ultimately trying to lead us into communism. It is a dangerous fool’s errand. And this election decides which path we’re going to take. It’s really that simple.”
That’s why Christians need to be on their knees. “I’ve been praying that voters have discernment,” the speaker said, “that they look past all the rhetoric, and they look to the record that they recognize. It’s not about personalities, it’s about the policies that will be enacted. And if we’re going to maintain our status as the great superpower in the last great nation in the world — and the beacon of hope and the shining city on a hill — we have got to get this right. So get your friends, your family, everybody at church, [and] go [vote]. This one really, really counts.”
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.