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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
We begin today with Annie Karni of The New York Times writing that House Speaker Mike Johnson now has a status within the Republican Party equivalent to former Vice President Mike Pence due to the House passage of funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan yesterday.
When Mr. Pence refused former President Donald J. Trump’s demands that he overturn the 2020 election results as he presided over the electoral vote count by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 — even as an angry mob with baseball bats and pepper spray invaded the Capitol and chanted “hang Mike Pence” — the normally unremarkable act of performing the duties in a vice president’s job description was hailed as courageous. [...]
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Pence, both mild-mannered, extremely conservative evangelical Christians who have put their faith at the center of their politics, occupy a similar space in their party. They have both gone through contortions to accommodate Mr. Trump and the forces he unleashed in their party, which in turn have ultimately come after them. Mr. Pence spent four years dutifully serving the former president and defending all of his words and actions. Mr. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, played a lead role in trying to overturn the election results on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
I’ll give Ms. Karni the “in their party” observation. But Mike Pence was quite sure that he would be breaking the law if he did as the shoe salesman asked him to do when he presided over the counting of electoral vote on Jan. 6, 2021 and to the extent that he wasn’t 100% sure, Mike Luttig and former Vice President Dan Quayle told him that Trump’s request was unconstitutional.
Speaker Johnson was trying to get needed security funding passed after delay after delay after delay and in defiance of the right flank of his party. Many people in the political world underestimated his ability to do it. So I’ll toss Johnson a cookie and say job well done but still...that does not make him Churchill.
