James Johnson is co-founder of JL Partners. He was the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to Theresa May as Prime Minister, 2016-2019.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives spent most of his formative years wanting to be a fireman. His favorite song is the hymn “Be Thou My Vision”. He has a type of marriage that has protections against divorce built into it. He does not drink, he doesn’t even swear.
Mike Johnson is not only an unusual speaker: he is also presiding over an unusual congress.
The 118th Congress looked set to be one of the most rancorous. After the Republican Party just squeaked a majority in November 2022, setting itself up in opposition to the Democrat-controlled Senate and White House, most expected partisan warfare. Political polarization made this more likely, with polling showing more people than ever view members of the other party as close-minded, dishonest and immoral.
Those critics seemed to be proven right very swiftly. In October, Speaker Kevin McCarthy was defenestrated after just eight months, and the Republican Party looked to become even more ungovernable. He was replaced by a Speaker from the same orbit as those who removed McCarthy, nicknamed “MAGA Mike”, and held a voting record of someone who had never voted for Ukraine funding in the past.
The Freedom Caucus (the group of ultra-conservatives in the House) felt they had someone who would now do their bidding. They thought they had constricted him further by asserting control of the rules process, meaning Johnson would need to assemble a two-thirds super-majority rather than just a simple majority for major pieces of legislation.
But rather than stay in the Freedom Caucus’ cage, Johnson has used it to govern. Instead of simply accepting the lot of a frozen House, he has assembled those majorities by reaching across the aisle to Democrats. The result is – bizarre given the circumstances – a bipartisan Congress.
The recent foreign aid legislation, passed by the House on Saturday and set to be signed by Joe Biden this week, is the obvious example. Aid to Israel was backed by 366 votes to 58, and $60bn for Ukraine approved by 311 yes votes to 112 noes. The package also included support for Taiwan, and legislation to force a sale of TikTok with a ban on the app if such an exchange is not made within a year.
The Ukraine bill was backed by all Democrats and just under half of Republican lawmakers. The Speaker has resisted all the threats of removing him from some of those who voted against, and remains in post today.
How did he do it? The mild-mannered man surrendered his search for party unity, looked to the Democrats to assemble his majority, and defied his party to remove him. I was a little optimistic with the timelines, but the tactic mirrored what I wrote for ConservativeHome in November:
“Johnson might need to compromise too – on his search for party unity. The new Speaker is a consensus-seeker, but sometimes consensus is not there to be found. Sometimes compromise must be forced.
“There are two reasons to think he might be able to force it. First, the threat of a shutdown at the end of next week will hone minds.
“Second, it was a once-in-American-history decision to remove a speaker…. Many Republicans remain furious at that decision and the gift they handed Democrats in the run-up to [the 2023] elections.
“And Republicans’ eyes are on 2024 more than ever. If nothing gets done, the House GOP will get the blame.
“Mike Johnson has goodwill. And with goodwill he has more power than he thinks.
Johnson discovered that power on Saturday. He dared the public too: polling by JL Partners last week showed that majorities of the public are opposed to each element of the bill. The $90bn price tag of the package comes up in interviews frequently on left and right as voters bemoan the lack of focus on domestic issues and the border.
Aid has not been the only example of this unlikely bipartisanship. Last week the House backed the renewal of FISA, maintaining the Federal Government’s surveillance powers. Johnson has gotten through the funding bill that brought McCarthy down. Analysis by the Wall Street Journal last month found that, of the six bills passed that they examined, Democrats accounted for nearly two-thirds of the yes votes.
Support from the Republican side emanates from the pro-business and more centrist caucuses, the Main Street Caucus and the Republican Governance Group. Johnson has been reliant on swing districts too: it is notable that all those lawmakers who voted against both Israel and Ukraine aid on Saturday are in rock-solid safe Republican districts.
Johnson’s own leadership style has something to do with it too: James Carville, Democratic strategist told the Atlantic: “I mean, I really want to hate him more than I do”. Nancy Pelosi, a former Democrat Speaker, said in the same interview he was “a person of integrity”. In a world as small as Washington, those relationships matter.
There are limits to this bipartisanship – and Donald Trump is one of them. Johnson handled Trump well ahead of the Ukraine vote, giving him the ability to claim a win by defining part of the package as a loan rather than a grant; recent reports suggest Trump also appears to have been interested by rare minerals in Ukraine that could be used as debt collateral if Kyiv wins back territory in the east. His tacit approval of the Ukraine bill was crucial to Johnson’s success.
Trump can also sink legislation: a bipartisan deal on immigration was dead on arrival in the Senate after Trump vetoed it. With the Speaker so reliant on Democrats to pass legislation, some have mused that Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, is the real power behind the throne. They are wrong: Trump is, and he remains highly influential.
This combination – of Trump, arithmetic, the blunders of the hard-right, and Johnson’s leadership style – have made Johnson the surprise consensus speaker. In a 2022 Georgetown University study of the last Congress, then backbencher Mike Johnson ranked 429th of 435 in their ‘bipartisan index’. In 2024, he presides over the most unlikely of bipartisan congresses.
The post James Johnson: How Republican intransigence has produced an unexpectedly bipartisan Congress appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: James Johnson
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