Mike Johnson, the "Moderate"

Even this guy is tethered to some basic political realities, unfortunately for MAGA

Mike Johnson | Official House Portrait

Back in October, when the Republicans successfully voted Mike Johnson in as Speaker of the House, I wrote that the Democrats were smart to help get rid of McCarthy, and that the new Speaker would actually be a good thing for the near-term future of the country (See my boringly-named “The Political Ramifications of a Mike Johnson Speakership”).

Not long before Mike Johnson became Speaker, right after the Republicans kicked McCarthy out, I wrote a few articles predicting not exactly who the new Speaker would be, but what the nature of the new Speaker would be (See “Let’s Call McCarthy’s Ouster What it Really Was: Bipartisanship”; “How the House is Like a Lost Television Remote”, which is my most-read article yet; and “A Deal With Their Devil”).

I don’t currently have enough subscribers to provide what could be called a “controversial” point of view, but I did get a bit of flack for this from readers. I felt that my arguments were sound and based on basic cynical politics, not some pollyannaish dreams of a country united. I won’t go into every point here; I encourage you to read them yourself (and subscribe to my newsletter so that my perspectives can actually be someday called “controversial”!) After reading the articles again myself, I feel vindicated…in fact, more vindicated than I would have even guessed back when I wrote it.

It has just been announced that a new budget has been tentatively agreed-upon by Johnson and Democratic Senate leadership that effectively changes nothing and keeps the government open for the year 2024. This isn’t just a continuing resolution kick-the can-down-the-road-for-a-month situation, it’s an actual fiscal yearly budget proposal.

Now, it’s not been approved yet and there’s probably some more negotiations to follow, but that's not really the point. The point is that instead of being an unforgiving hardline MAGA stalwart, bent on pushing his own feared uncompromising “Christo-fascist” agenda as many feared, he’s actually engaging in politics as usual. Which, in this day and age, is refreshingly pleasant to see.

He’s essentially behaving more like a moderate than a Christo-fascist, which is exactly how I had predicted the new Speaker would behave. One of my predictions was that the new Speaker wouldn’t necessarily be a moderate (as many of my critics pointed out, there are essentially no Republican moderates in existence at the moment), but that he or she would become one or at least behave like one once they became Speaker.

The reason is pretty simple: it’s not currently popular to be a MAGA extremist/arsonist. It’s actually popular to keep the government functioning and not burn it all to the ground. And if Republicans do burn it to the ground, there will be hell to pay come election time. The more they appear to want to burn it to the ground as a unit, the worse their election prospects are.

The beauty of Mike Johnson as Speaker, as opposed to his predecessor Kevin McCarthy or a potential actual “moderate” like Tom Emmert, is that the Democrats get the best of both worlds, which is why I said they were smart to get rid of McCarthy. Not only do they get the behavior of a moderate, since this is forced upon Johnson by the aforementioned political realities, they get the baggage of a Christo-fascist to thrust upon voters in the 2024 election.

The Republicans could have gone with a true moderate as Speaker, or at least what would have passed for a Republican moderate, such as Emmert. But instead, in order to satiate the MAGA-arsonist and hardline Trumpist faction of the party, including Trump himself, they went with someone that was historically on the extreme fringe and very Trumpy. His mild-mannered nature may have contributed to his overall appeal and subsequent unanimous victory for Speaker, but Johnson’s history is one of extreme Christian dogmatic tendencies, not to mention his quiet yet intimate involvement as an influential contributor in the Jan 6 Congressional objections to the Biden election victory.

As a result of the proposed fiscal 2024 budget, the MAGA arsonist faction is up in arms, pretty much exactly as they were when McCarthy did essentially the same thing. The same dysfunction as before still exists in the Republican party — it never went away.

Another upcoming conflict resolution may be immigration policy, if you can believe it. Republicans are continuing to force this issue by tying it to funding for military support for Ukraine. The fact that it’s on the table at all puts Republicans in an awkward position. They have sabotaged efforts in the past to help fix the border, adhering to extreme positions that Democrats would never agree to, resulting in keeping the issue alive as a political cudgel (caravans!! illegals committing crimes!!).

So I’m not sure how negotiating with Democrats to come to a bipartisan solution helps them politically now, but these negotiations are ongoing and are apparently not going too badly, at least in the Senate. Can you imagine an actual negotiated resolution to the immigration issue in this political climate of 2024? Anything other than closing the border and immediate internment and/or deportations for any recent border crossers will surely piss off the MAGA arsonists and enrage the extreme base. If the 2024 budget proposal doesn’t cause them to try to kick yet another Speaker out of the position, a compromise immigration bill almost surely will.

Even Johnson can’t hide from the political realities of an evenly divided government, with Democrats controlling the Senate and the Presidency. He can be hardline and not get anything done and risk shutting down the government, which would endear him to the loud MAGA arsonist faction of his party, but spell doom for the 2024 elections. Or he can be moderate and negotiate deals that keep the government functioning and promote responsible problem-solving leadership, and lease give Republicans hope for keeping the House in 2024.

It’s hard to conclude right now that he’s doing anything other than walking the path of the latter. The 2024 fiscal budget is not a done deal yet, and who know what will actually happen with immigration policy. But if they both get resolved in a bipartisan fashion, Johnson may go down in history as one of the most moderate Republican Speakers in a generation.