After rejecting Gym Jordan, the House seemed ready to put up a mildly odious right winger who was skeptical of Trump's lies about 2020. That lasted all of four hours.
Instead, the GOP has managed to land on an even worse candidate for Speaker! He may not be as repellent as Jordan on style points, but he's just as dangerous.
Hopefully, there are a handful of Republicans who are fed up with the Big Lie bullshit and will block him.
At this point, if the choice is Johnson or, I dunno, Kevin McCarthy, Democrats might need to vote for McCarthy. Johnson might be the scariest authoritarian stooge the Chaos Caucus has vomited up yet.
UPDATE: Congratulations. They've elected a bigot and an authoritarian to be Speaker of the House.
The question now, of course, is whether this bruising fight will mean that the GOP will seek to moderate on issues like Ukraine and keeping the government open. By "moderating" I mean will they allow votes on the floor and not punish vulnerable members for voting for measures that might not pass the litmus test of Mike Johnson's Christianist beliefs.
For example: the Senate will pass a bill giving aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Pro-Putinist members of the GOP would prefer to vote on those as separate measures, so they can try and strip aid to Ukraine away. That position - denying aid to Ukraine - would not get a majority vote if it got to the floor. So Johnson could simply not bring the bill to the floor.
Ideally, they find a way to at least keep aid flowing and the government open, while still voting on toxic messaging bills on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Johnson holds awful, awful positions. I hope the House tries to pass them, they die in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries is elected Speaker in January 2025.
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