The US House of Representatives has a new speaker in Mike Johnson of Louisiana who is even more of a Donald Trump acolyte than Kevin McCarthy who was displaced from the speaker’s chair. An embarrassing hiatus has come to an end and the Republicans, in control of the House as further reflected in a 220-209 vote for Johnson, can resume the political business of taking on the Democrats and putting a spoke in their plans.
McCarthy paid the price for cutting a deal with the Democrats under President Joe Biden and putting off a feared shutdown of government. A bigger piece of business that will come up before the House soon is to pass the $105 billion that the President has asked for towards aiding Ukraine in fighting the Russian invasion and Israel to take on the Hamas in the fracas over terror attacks from Gaza, besides securing the US’s southern border from migrants.
No Republican would like to oppose aid to Israel, but the same cannot be said of Ukraine even if it is the bigger victim of a ground offensive. Amid fractious American politics, differences are showing up in the matter of buttressing Ukraine in the war and the aid to a democratic country under attack will be an immediate task of the new speaker.
Johnson, architect of bizarre efforts to overturn the 2020 verdict, had come galloping in like a rank outsider in a horse race with a big field of runners to pip the likes of Jim Jordan who saw his bid run into the ground by moderates in the party. Johnson will also be facing the dilemma of whether to pass bills to keep the US government going.
It is being said that the arch Conservative Johnson made it as he had lesser enemies within the Republican Party that is sporting a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon regarding being outright Trump devotees with an eye on power he promises to bring as the leading contender for US President in 2024 or party loyalists conscious of the traditions of the grand old party.
