When the relatively unknown Representative Mike Johnson won the speaker’s gavel last year, many rank-and-file House Republicans viewed him as a transitional figure whose chief job was to pull the party out of a funk of paralysis and dysfunction.
A year later, after barely holding on to his majority and cementing a close political partnership with President-elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Johnson is on track to keep the gavel for a second consecutive term. On Wednesday, he won his party’s nomination for speaker unanimously, after the ultraconservatives who tormented and ultimately ousted his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, decided not to run a protest candidate.
But the path ahead for Mr. Johnson remains fraught. Republicans are on track to hold yet another paper-thin majority in the next Congress, and despite the speaker’s entreaties, Mr. Trump has already eroded that number by choosing three House G.O.P. lawmakers for positions in his administration.
Mr. Johnson still must win a majority vote on the House floor in January to keep the speakership, a task that could be upended by just a few rebels. And should he formally win the gavel, he will face the challenge of trying to push through sweeping legislation — to suspend the debt ceiling, fund the government and rewrite the tax code — with few votes to spare.
His tricky balancing act began almost the moment he won his colleagues’ support this week to continue as speaker. In an attempt to buy himself more breathing room, Mr. Johnson brokered a handshake deal with right-wing Republicans to change a rule that for the past two years has allowed a single member of the House to force a snap vote to remove the speaker.
The ultraconservatives said they would agree that in the next Congress, nine lawmakers would be needed to prompt such a vote. That is one more than the number of Republicans who voted to remove Mr. McCarthy as speaker last year.
In return, Mr. Johnson killed a push by more mainstream conservatives to punish hard-liners who have blocked legislation during the current Congress by stripping them of coveted committee posts.
But the rule change will not be codified until the full House votes in January, meaning that hard-right lawmakers could renege on the deal and still insist on the speaker be subject to a sudden-death vote. The haggling underscored the tenuous position in which Mr. Johnson finds himself.
“If we can’t get people to hold up their end of the bargain in January, then that’s actually a really important data point for the next 24 months,” said Representative Dusty Johnson, Republican of South Dakota, a mainstream conservative who helped negotiate the agreement. “If we can’t trust people with their word, it’s going to be hard to deliver any conservative victories.”
Mr. Johnson defied expectations last year, sidestepping political retribution even as he repeatedly steered around ultraconservatives and used Democratic votes to push through legislation they despised, including stopgap spending bills and aid for Ukraine.
This time, with Republicans in full control of Washington and conservatives emboldened by the mandate that voters handed them, Mr. Johnson is dealing with an entirely different set of expectations.
“Last year was different,” said Representative Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida. “A lot of things that came out of the House, we knew it was going to go sit on Schumer’s desk, and even if they got passed, the president was never going to sign it.”
“Anything that passes this House now, we expect to get to the president’s desk and become real,” he said. “So the game is different. And we have to act in a different way.”
Whether House Republicans, a notoriously unruly bunch, can unite under Mr. Trump’s “America First” banner remains to be seen.
The scenes that played out at the Capitol this week — chief among them Mr. Trump’s appeal to Republicans to support him at a private meeting — indicated that for now at least, Mr. Johnson is riding an unlikely surge of political fortune.
“It’s clear to me that Speaker Johnson led us to victory,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said. “He’s led under very difficult circumstances. He and the president clearly have a tremendous rapport and can work together. Why in the world would you challenge him, and for what purpose?”
But some of Mr. Johnson’s chief antagonists have already offered muted criticism of the speaker. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who led a failed effort this year to oust him, told CNN that she blamed him for the party’s small majority in the House.
“He fully passed the Biden-Harris agenda,” Ms. Greene said.
Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, a frequent thorn in the side of leadership who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy, declined to say whether he would support Mr. Johnson’s bid for speaker, even after Mr. Trump urged Republicans to back him.
“I appreciate President Trump coming and talking, and I of course endorse that agenda,” he said. “But for me, I’m not going to comment on where I’m going to land on the speaker.”
Republicans’ first major order of business when they officially take power in January will present Mr. Johnson with a substantial political hazard. Mr. Trump on the campaign trail promised a slew of costly changes to the tax code, including eliminating taxes on tips and on Social Security benefits. At the same time, large swaths of the tax cuts approved during the first Trump administration expire at the end of next year.
That will require the speaker to balance a smorgasbord of priorities cutting across various constituencies. It will pit ultraconservatives who are eager to include deep spending cuts and stringent border security measures in any major tax legislation against more mainstream Republicans who are more inclined to protect government services.
Mr. Johnson, ever the optimist, remained sanguine on Wednesday shortly after winning the unanimous backing of his party, predicting that the unity would stretch into the new year.
“We had a very productive day together as a Republican conference, and the theme that you’ll hear over and over from all of our members across the conference is that we are unified and energized and ready to go,” he said. “We have to deliver for the American people beginning on Day 1 in the new Congress, and we will be ready for that.”
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