Things are about to get worse for Mike Johnson

Being a rubber stamp for Trump wouldn't be a problem if all the president's talk about living in a ‘Golden Age’ were true

- JONAH GOLDBERG

SPEAKER Mike Johnson talks with reporters before a vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA Getty Images

HERE’s A conundrum for Republican politicians going into 2026, and even 2028. What do you do when you've turned the GOP into a Trump-branded, populist, antiestablishment party but you now control the government and it’s not going very well?

One time-tested answer: ritual human sacrifice. Which is why the next year is going to be a miserable one for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Let’s set the scene.

The job of speaker never really has been nonpartisan. What’s changed in recent decades is that more and more power has been concentrated in the speaker's office while, at the same time, the speaker is expected to defer to the president’s agenda when the same party holds the White House. This was the trend before Johnson got the job, but he’s taken it to extremes we've never witnessed.

Also, the speaker's partisanship traditionally is focused on protecting the political interests of caucus members, not the president. And it’s usually tempered by the obligation to defend the integrity of the institution. Johnson has subordinated both obligations to the White House’s agenda to a remarkable degree.