The House Republicans’ Troubling New Litmus Test

Updated on October 25 at 1:59 p.m. ET

One paradox of the current House Republican majority, and a sign of the deep cleavages within it, is that having sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election can be both disqualifying and essential to becoming speaker of the House.

After Jim Jordan of Ohio’s campaign to become speaker flamed out, The Washington Post reported that one reason some colleagues refused to vote for him was his vocal role in trying to prevent the inauguration of Joe Biden. Following Jordan’s exit, nine Republicans announced bids for the role, seven of whom had voted not to certify the 2020 election.

The next GOP nominee, however, was Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who voted in favor of certifying the election. That vote—on a matter for which there was no evidence of fraud and no evidence of theft—helped doom Emmer, who withdrew without even seeing a floor vote. Former President Donald Trump, along with some allies, mobilized to block Emmer, citing his certification vote, criticism of Trump after the January 6 riot at the Capitol, and perceived weak defense of Trump amid his 91 felony charges.

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The next man up was Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who actually managed to win the speakership in a vote this afternoon. His victory is in part a product of fatigue: Republicans understood how bad the failure to elect a speaker was, both for governance and for public appearance. Johnson also hasn’t made as many enemies as the prior nominees, in part because he’s only been in Congress since 2016. But Johnson also has cachet in the MAGA fringe of the House and with Trump, because he was, as The New York Times described him last year, “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” to certifying the election.

A certain logic dictates that the leader of the House GOP would be an election denier, because the median GOP member is. In 2021, 139 House Republicans voted not to certify the election, and 109 of them remain in the House out of 221 current total Republicans. Of the GOP members who have been newly elected since, several are election deniers. (One, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, was even present at the Stop the Steal rally before the riot.) But what is striking is how a failed vote nearly three years ago became a central issue in the weeks-long speaker fight.

[David A. Graham: The wackadoodle wave]

Kevin McCarthy, the recently deposed speaker, fit the bill, having voted not to certify. But McCarthy is widely viewed as an institutionalist, so his vote garnered him neither much credibility with conservatives nor the condemnation it deserved among some Democratic and mainstream observers. For better or worse, McCarthy’s vote was treated as cynical, insincere politicking. (It didn’t help that he was publicly bullied into signing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court challenging the results in four states.)

But Johnson was not just a member going along with the election denial for political expediency. He was the intellectual force—such as it was—behind one major prong of the denial. Although Johnson is mild-mannered and little-known outside Congress, he’s practically just Jim Jordan with a suit jacket, conservative glasses, and a less hectoring voice.

Johnson, a constitutional lawyer by profession, concocted what he called a “third option” to allow Republicans to challenge the election without endorsing the wildest claims of flipped votes and Venezuelan interventions. Instead, as the Times reported in detail, he argued that the way some states had changed voting procedures in response to the coronavirus pandemic was unconstitutional. Delivered in a careful way, this seemed like a lawyerly argument, but the intended effect was radical: It aimed to have the votes of several key states that voted for Biden simply thrown out, disenfranchising millions of Americans and handing Trump reelection. (The premise was also shaky; the number of votes affected by the changes wouldn’t have flipped the states.)

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When Texas’s attorney general made a similar argument to the U.S. Supreme Court, Johnson wrote an amicus brief in support of it and rounded up House Republicans to sign it, using an implicit threat: He said that Trump would “be anxiously awaiting the final list” of signers to review. According to the Times, the lawyer for House Republican leaders said that Johnson’s arguments didn’t hold water, but he still managed to get 125 members to sign. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court rejected the argument in December 2020, saying that Texas had no standing to sue.

Having run out of other options, many of the same Republicans decided to vote on January 6 not to certify the election. Johnson put out a phenomenally disingenuous statement explaining that vote, in which he spread claims that undermined faith in elections despite a lack of evidence or legal grounding, all in the name of building faith. “Our extraordinary republic has endured for nearly two and a half centuries based on the consent of the governed,” he and 36 colleagues wrote. “That consent is grounded in the confidence of our people in the legitimacy of our institutions of government. Among our most fundamental institutions is the system of free and fair elections we rely upon, and any erosion in that foundation jeopardizes the stability of our republic.” Johnson also told The New Yorker, apparently with a straight face, that he “genuinely believe[d]” that Trump was challenging the election on principle and not just to stay in power.

Last night, after Johnson was designated the speaker nominee, a reporter asked him about his role in trying to overturn the election. His colleagues jeered at the reporter while Johnson smirked and then said, “Next question.” The dismissiveness is unwarranted, especially when three former lawyers for Trump have pleaded guilty to crimes related to election subversion just in the past week. But Republican members don’t want to talk about the topic, because they know that election denial is not popular with the American people. Within the GOP caucus, however, it’s not just mainstream—it might be a prerequisite for leadership.