Charlie Sykes: 'Kraken-level' Mike Johnson’s speaker victory shows GOP has 'no normies left'
When Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) was confirmed as House speaker, he accomplished something that other Republican nominees — including Louisiana's Steve Scalise, Ohio's Jim Jordan and Minnesota's Tom Emmer — had been unable to accomplish since the ousting of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) more than three weeks earlier. And he did it without bipartisan support.
House Democrats unanimously voted to make Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) speaker, while Republicans voted unanimously in favor of Johnson. Jordan had lost three votes; Johnson was confirmed on the first vote.
Jordan and Johnson have very different dispositions. While Jordan is flamboyant, abrasive and highly performative, Johnson has a much calmer disposition. Regardless, Johnson is a far-right Christian nationalist who promoted the Big Lie after Trump lost the 2020 election.
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In an opinion column published by MSNBC on October 29, Never Trump conservative Charlie Sykes laments that even the "normies" in the House GOP caucus caved into pressure and voted to make Johnson speaker.
"In the end, there were no normies left," Sykes explains. "Last week, every Republican in the House voted for a man The New York Times described as 'the most important architect' of the attempt to overthrow Donald Trump's 2020 electoral defeat. And yet, for a few naive days, it appeared that the center might actually hold. After all, nearly two dozen GOP 'moderates' had braved the bullying and threats from MAGA World and blocked Rep. Jim Jordan from the speakership a few days earlier."
Sykes continues, "Some of these Jordan holdouts were institutionalists, who couldn't stomach elevating someone that former Speaker John Boehner had described as a 'legislative terrorist' to House leadership; others appeared to draw a line at election denialism and participation in the January 6 insurrection. Others simply couldn't stand Jordan's performative obnoxiousness."
The Never Trump conservative observes that "in the end," the "normies simply folded."
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"Make no mistake about it: This new speaker is not a run-of-the-mill Trump toady," Sykes warns. "Johnson was a central player in pushing a lawsuit that would have thrown out tens of millions of votes in states that Trump lost. Even worse: Johnson touted some the wooliest of the Kraken-level conspiracy theories, including the bizarre lie that voting software came from 'Hugo Chavez's Venezuela."
Sykes adds, "Those were the kind of lies that cost Fox News $787 million, and resulted in guilty pleas from Trump co-defendants Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro. And now, those lies have propelled Johnson into the presidential line of succession."
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Read Charlie Sykes' full MSNBC column at this link.
