The gushing accolades directed at Speaker Mike Johnson in recent days for finally defying the right wing of his party and allowing an aid bill for Ukraine to move through the House might have seemed a tad excessive.
After all, a speaker’s entire job is to move legislation through the House, and as Saturday’s vote to pass the bill demonstrated, the Ukraine measure had overwhelming support. But Mr. Johnson’s feat was not so different from that of another embattled Republican who faced a difficult choice under immense pressure from hard-right Republicans and was saluted as a hero for simply doing his job: former Vice President Mike Pence.
When Mr. Pence refused to accede to 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. Pence and now Mr. Johnson represent the most high-profile examples of a stark political reality: In today’s Republican Party, subsumed by Mr. Trump, taking the norm-preserving, consensus-driven path can draw the ire of your constituents and spell the end of your political career.
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.
But in two critical moments, when facing intense, sometimes violent, pressure from within their party, they both chose a more difficult path.
Mr. Johnson is facing a growing movement on his right flank to oust him from his job. Even after he stood by Mr. Trump’s side at Mar-a-Lago and appeared to have his support, top surrogates for the former president including his son Donald Trump Jr. and one of the leading contenders for vice president, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, have been upbraiding him for the decision to move ahead with the security package.
“He’s not met the moment, and Mike Johnson must go just like Kevin McCarthy,” Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser and host of the influential right-wing War Room podcast, said Friday at a conservative retreat in Florida, referring to Mr. Johnson’s predecessor as speaker.
Because of his hard break with Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence’s short-lived presidential campaign struggled to raise money and never gained traction in the polls that were dominated from the start by the former president.
On social media this week, Mr. Pence urged Democrats and Republicans alike to “rally around Speaker Johnson.” Unsurprisingly, his post was besieged by commenters calling both Republicans “traitors”; one said it was an example of a “Judas supporting another Judas.”
Mr. Pence has been offering Mr. Johnson private encouragement in recent weeks, as he faced growing discontent from the far right.
“I think they’re both courageous,” said Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Mr. Pence, arguing that their Christian faith helps to ground both men in difficult moments.
Sarah Longwell, a prominent anti-Trump Republican political strategist, said it was notable when Republicans in Washington “do the right thing, and they do deserve credit for bucking the forces in their own party.” She added that “there still needs to be a robust apparatus for encouraging people to do the right thing and maintaining that expectation.”
On the House floor on Saturday…
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