Dispute over Israel, Ukraine Aid Puts Speaker Johnson at Odds with Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell

The perfect two to be at odds with.

Harry Truman could fit this mold. As does Reagan and many military leaders from Andrew Jackson to today.

Spent a lot of time watching Man With a Plan, starring Matt LeBlanc. Get it? Does the GOP get it?

As this print illustrated, Abraham Lincoln was just one candidate among many. Lincoln had been active in Illinois politics for much of his life. He had served many years in the state legislature and one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the 1850s he helped establish the Republican Party. He gained national attention for his well-publicized debates with Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Illinois senate campaign and for his 1860 speech at New York City’s Cooper Union.

Senator William H. Seward of New York was the front-runner among Republicans, but his supporters could not put together a majority of delegates. On the third ballot, Lincoln emerged as the convention’s compromise candidate.

https://nypost.com/2023/10/25/opinion/mike-johnson-lucked-into-speaker-job-but-he-has-talent-to-pull-it-off/

There are famously Five Families warring inside the House Republican tent: the Tea Party-influenced House Freedom Caucus, the conservative Republican Study Committee, business-oriented Chamber of Commerce types, the moderate Republican Governance Group and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

So how did Johnson get them temporarily to agree on electing him?

He belongs to the Freedom Caucus and used to chair the Republican Study Committee, nailing down his right flank.
His leadership position as House Republican Conference vice chairman meant he had personal relationships with many moderate members, who liked his low-key style and his willingness to listen to them. And he has demonstrated an interest in the details of legislation, impressing other members expert in tax, budget and defense issues.

It also didn’t escape the notice of MAGA members that he had served on the defense team in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020.

New York House Republicans, several of whom blocked Jim Jordan’s speaker bid, all voted for Johnson so we can “get back to work.”

Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, told Newsmax that Johnson “works well with all segments of our conference. I never heard a bad word about him.”

Other members called him a “Happy Warrior” out of the same mold as the late Jack Kemp, who could disagree with someone without being disagreeable.
Finally, Johnson has formidable communication skills. A constitutional lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, he has years of experience arguing cases in federal court. He was also a college professor and conservative talk-show host.

That’s quite a skill stack, to use the words of Scott Adams.

Johnson embraced the same five commonsense principles to reform the budget process he touted when running for speaker. They are:

1. Fund the government on time with all single subject appropriations bills passing the House by June 30 — or no recess til it’s done.

2. Pass real spending cuts, NOT budget gimmicks.

3. No short term, stop-gap funding of the government.

4. Enforce a true 72-hour rule allowing members and voters time to review legislation.

5. Make sure power is decentralized enough that almost all members feel they have a stake in bills passing on the House floor.

Good luck with that; IIRC McCarthy promised much the same.
However, Johnson may actually mean it.

One lesson of politics is that everyone who gets to the top has usually traveled there by one of two roads — one labeled talent and one labeled luck. The secret to success, the late Rep. Edward Pattison of New York told me, is: “Never let anyone know which one of those roads you took to where you are now.”

The truth is, of course, most successful politicians combine real talent with great luck. Speaker Mike Johnson is no exception. Fewer than nine years ago, he was a mere lawyer in Shreveport, La., when his local state legislator resigned to become a judge.

Johnson filed for the seat, and to his astonishment, he drew no opponents and was automatically elected.

When his local congressman gave up his seat in 2016, Johnson was perfectly positioned to run and wound up beating a Democrat with 65% of the vote, four points higher than Donald Trump’s showing. He shrewdly stayed out of the speaker battle until his low-key, Happy Warrior approach was exactly what desperate members were looking for.

Mike Johnson, at 51 the youngest House speaker save for Paul Ryan in 150 years, has demonstrated both talent and luck are on his side.

Luck favors the prepared.

MORE directly from the Speaker:

“The greatest threat to our national security is our nation’s debt and while we’ve been sitting in this room – that’s right – the debt has crossed almost $33.6 trillion and in time it’s going to take me to deliver this speech, we will go up $20 million in debt. It’s unsustainable,” Johnson said on the House floor to a standing ovation from Republicans and a handful of Democrats seated in the chamber.

“We have to get the country back on track. We know this isn’t going to be an easy task and tough decisions will have to be made but the consequences if we don’t act now are unbearable. We have a duty to the American people to explain this to them so they understand it well and we’re going to establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately,” he added after formally taking the gavel.

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/johnson-begins-house-speakership-focus-debt-inflation-and-border-catastrophe

Debt, inflation, and borders? All sorely neglected by McCarthy and Ryan, and problems overdue for serious, protracted attention.

Sadly, Congress has far more precedents the other way. However, if his faction does go that route, I hope his opponents won’t follow them down that dead-end road, but just work-around or side-line them, which I believe is something the Speaker can control to some extent.