--- title: Mike Johnson's Election Marks the End of Reagan's GOP description: The election of Speaker Mike Johnson spells the final end of Reagan's GOP. But maybe that's as it should be. canonical: https://time.com/6329868/mike-johnsons-election-end-of-reagans-gop/ author: Matthew Continetti article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-10-31T11:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:47.906Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Speaker Mike Johnson Is Final Nail in Reagan's GOP og:description: The election of Speaker Mike Johnson spells the final end of Reagan's GOP. But maybe that's as it should be. og:url: https://time.com/6329868/mike-johnsons-election-end-of-reagans-gop/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd86dc0769a8560db/698a41ce16d8849c6cc3c68b/GettyImages-1756338792.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: House Lawmakers Work Towards Electing New Speaker On Capitol Hill og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Speaker Mike Johnson Is Final Nail in Reagan's GOP twitter:description: The election of Speaker Mike Johnson spells the final end of Reagan's GOP. But maybe that's as it should be. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd86dc0769a8560db/698a41ce16d8849c6cc3c68b/GettyImages-1756338792.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Mike Johnson's Election Marks the End of Reagan's GOP > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Mike Johnson Elected As House Speaker After Weeks of Turmoil [Watch (HLS stream): Mike Johnson Elected As House Speaker After Weeks of Turmoil](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EaslN0bu.m3u8) (3:47)  _Published 2023-10-25. Republicans elected Rep. Mike Johnson as House speaker on Oct. 25, elevating a deeply conservative but lesser-known leader to the seat of U.S. power and ending for now the political chaos in their majority._ by [Matthew Continetti](https://time.com/author/matthew-continetti/) ## Matthew Continetti Oct 31, 2023 11:00 AM UTC  Rep. Mike Johnson talks with fellow lawmakers as the House of Representatives holds an election for a new Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 25, 2023 in Washington, DC. After a contentious nominating period that has seen four candidates over a three-week period, the House GOP conference selected Rep. Mike Johnson as their most recent nominee to succeed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted on Oct. 4 in a move led by a small group of conservative members of his own party. Rep. Mike Johnson talks with fellow lawmakers as the House of Representatives holds an election for a new Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 25, 2023 in Washington, DC. After a contentious nominating period that has seen four candidates over a three-week period, the House GOP conference selected Rep. Mike Johnson as their most recent nominee to succeed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted on Oct. 4 in a move led by a small group of conservative members of his own party. Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images by [Matthew Continetti](https://time.com/author/matthew-continetti/) ## Matthew Continetti Oct 31, 2023 11:00 AM UTC “MAGA is ascendant,” crowed Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., FL) on October 25\. He had reason to be happy. After weeks of chaos, the House Republicans have settled on the unknown [Rep. Mike Johnson](https://time.com/6328412/mike-johnson-speaker-republicans-experience/) (R., LA) to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., CA). The well-liked Johnson is thoroughly in line with nationalist-populist Republicans such as Gaetz, who engineered [McCarthy’s fall](https://time.com/6320197/in-dramatic-vote-mccarthy-becomes-first-house-speaker-to-be-ousted-in-u-s-history/). The episode was another sign that the GOP is no longer Ronald Reagan’s party. It is Donald Trump’s. Since Reagan left office 35 years ago, the GOP has defined itself negatively. The coalition comes together not based on an affirmative program but in protest over someone else’s. The party's greatest moments have been acts of rebuke. First came the election of 1994\. Republicans won control of Congress for the first time in 40 years in a rejection of Bill Clinton’s health care plan, tax hikes, and liberal social views. George W. Bush ran in 2000 to “restore integrity to the White House,” a subtle dig at the character of his otherwise popular predecessor. Things became more difficult for Republicans as affluent voters and voters with advanced degrees, along with Millennial and eventually Gen Z voters, turned away from social conservatism. The failures of the Bush administration didn’t make things easier. Nor did the lackluster presidential campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Barack Obama inadvertently reassembled the Reagan coalition of white college-educated married couples in the suburbs. These upwardly mobile professionals, many of whom were religiously observant, combined with traditional GOP constituencies in the Great Plains, evangelical Protestant communities in the South, and white noncollege voters in the Rust Belt. In 2010 and 2014, Republican candidates defied Obama. By the time he departed the White House, the Democratic party was in shambles. Republicans held the House, the Senate, most governor’s mansions, and two-thirds of state legislative chambers. This was not because voters loved the GOP. It was because voters saw the GOP as the way to block Democratic overreach. Obama was a gift to the Republican Party: a limitless source of conservative outrage that powered the party’s candidates to ever greater heights. Obama and his advisers believed that the right mix of Progressive policies would defeat populist resistance. “My hope is that if the American people send a message” to Republicans, Obama told _Rolling Stone_ in 2012, and “they suffer some losses in this next election, that there’s going to be some self-reflection going on—that it might break the fever.” The message was never sent. The “fever” behind grassroots rejection of Obama’s presidency did not break. It intensified. It assumed the form of Trump. **_Read More:_** [**_The Only Way to Fix Congress_**](https://time.com/6326601/how-to-fix-congress/) Reagan led a party of insiders—aspirational leaders invested in America’s institutions. Trump, by contrast, is the outsider-in-chief. His coalition also looks different than Reagan’s. As the electorate became more educated, politics became a struggle over cultural values. And as those values swung left on immigration, race, climate, sex and gender, and national pride, America has become divided by geography and education. In 2016 Hillary Clinton became the first Democrat to win college-educated white voters since 1956\. Biden won them again in 2020\. Republican pollster Bill McInturff says that in 2012 the GOP was split: 48 percent of Republicans did not have college degrees; 40 percent did. By 2022, the share of Republicans without degrees had grown to 62 percent. The share of Republicans with a bachelor’s fell to 25 percent. This GOP—Trump’s GOP—is down-market, confrontational, politically incorrect, suspicious of institutional authority, and uninterested in following rules set by liberals. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah’s [retirement](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/us/politics/mitt-romney-retirement.html) announcement was tacit recognition that the Republican Party that ran him for president a little more than 10 years ago no longer exists. The party that nominated Reagan 40 years ago is gone as well. Perhaps that is how it should be. Parties and movements change. Reagan was more of a social conservative than conservative icon Barry Goldwater, who was more of a foreign-policy hawk than previous GOP leaders. The issue set of the Trump era—migration, the rise of China and Silicon Valley, the whopping returns to participation in the information economy, conservative control of the Supreme Court—is a far cry from what Reagan had to deal with. Republicans and conservatives must cope with the social and economic conditions of our time, not Reagan’s. They must strengthen the best aspects of our society and culture while ameliorating the worst. That could mean adopting new attitudes toward the global economy and cultural institutions while unraveling the unaccountable bureaucratic structure of the administrative state. What it cannot mean—what it can never mean—is abandoning the American tradition of liberty under law to satisfy the ego of a single man. ## Transcript Denominations are now in order. The turnout recognizes the gentleman from New York Miss siphonic colleagues on behalf of the house Republican conference. I rise today to nominate the gentleman from Louisiana Mike Johnson as Speaker of the people's house. Mike is a Titan on the Judiciary Committee and a dedicated member of the House armed services committee and as vice-chair of our conference. He has United all of our members to speak clearly and boldly on behalf of the American people. The federal government has been illegally weaponize against We the People shredding the Constitution targeting conservatives parents and even Joe Biden stop political opponents. The people are looking to this great shame to save America and save America we will Mr. Speaker you may agree with this but we are back here 22 days into this Republican manufactured chaos and House Republicans have brought us to the exact same position that we were back then all of the infighting all of the disarray just to end up where we were three weeks ago. These past few weeks. We have been left wondering if Republicans were truly intent on solving our issues reopening the House of Representatives and rallying around someone to leave this chamber or has this been about something else has this been about a focus of House Republicans to find the person who can pass their extreme litmus test to oppose marriage equality and acting Nationwide abortion ban without exceptions gut Social Security and Medicare and support overturning a free and fair election, the fair question the fair question the gentleman from New York state it, right? This is been about one thing. This is been about who can appease Donald Trump. The reading clerk will now call the roll Adams. Jefferies aderholt Johnson and they're challenged that the total number of votes cast is 429 of which The Honorable Mike Johnson of the state of Louisiana as we receive 220 volts. And the audible Hakeem Jeffries of the state of New York has received 209 votes. 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