Mike Johnson re-elected House Speaker, by the slimmest of margins

House Speaker Mike Johnson, with the votes of our local congressmen, Ben Cline and John McGuire, got the bare minimum of votes needed – 218 – to win re-election to the congressional leadership post on Friday.

It was more dramatic than just being a skin-of-the-teeth victory.

Three House Republicans – Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Keith Self, R-Texas – initially cast votes for Republicans other than Johnson.

Norman and Self later changed their votes to Johnson, Self doing so after getting a phone call from Donald Trump, which he called a “lively” discussion in which he said he was promised by the president-elect that the far right will be included in efforts to shape tax and immigration bills.

Good luck with seeing to it that Trump follows up on his promises; if I were Messrs. Norman and Self, I’d be preparing for my 2026 Republican primaries against Trump-backed challengers.

McGuire was one of those, unseating fellow Republican Bob Good in Virginia’s Fifth District seat in Congress after Good had the gumption to back Ron DeSantis for president ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle.

Good indicated this week that he would not have voted for Johnson for Speaker, but he wasn’t around to be a fly in the ointment.

Meanwhile, McGuire’s only comments on the Johnson re-election were to confirm on social media that he voted for Johnson and to offer congratulations.

The Republican that Good had outmaneuvered for the Fifth District seat back in 2020, Denver Riggleman, who later served as an advisor to the House committee that investigated the 2021 insurrection, told MSNBC after Friday’s vote that Republicans celebrating the one-ballot election are “applauding their own misery and the torture chamber that’s gonna be in the next two years in the House.”

“What’s gonna happen over the next six to nine months, because if you look at the slim majority right now, I think this is no-room-to-breathe-Congress, because you’re probably gonna have a Democratic Congress in ’26. How are they gonna do this?” Riggleman said.