The Republican Party has gone from bad to disastrous in their choosing of Speakers of the House in the past thirty years.
Dennis Hastert, the longest serving Republican Speaker in American history, eight years, from 1999-2007, seemed reasonable, but later was tried and convicted as a sex offender of teenage boys, and served time in prison, becoming the highest ranked elected official in American history to serve a prison sentence.
From 2011-2015, John Boehner served as Speaker, and got mixed reviews, as a major decline in reputation as compared to Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who served from 2007-2011, and later from 2019-2023. Boehner made it his mission to do everything possible to block President Barack Obama in any way imaginable.
Paul Ryan succeeded Boehner from late 2015-2019, and is considered to have been worse than Boehner.
Then, Kevin McCarthy became Speaker in 2023 after 15 ballots, and ended up serving only nine plus months, as he was voted out by his Republican caucus, and is considered to have been worse than any of his Republican predecessors.
And now, we have Mike Johnson, who is a religious extremist, rejects science and facts, and has proved to be a Donald Trump lackey, after having refused to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the Presidential Election of 2020.
The idea that these men were and are two heartbeats away from the Presidency is terrifying, and they make Nancy Pelosi stand out as one of the top few Speakers of the House in all of American history!