Mike Johnson lucked into speaker job — but he has talent to pull it off

Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the new House speaker, has pulled off what no one thought possible: He swept past the bad blood, the ego-driven personalities and ideological divisions among House Republicans and won a unanimous vote of his conference.

The Goldilocks candidate even surprised Donald Trump. Trump predicted Monday, “There’s only one person” who could unite the party: Jesus Christ. “If Jesus came down and said, ‘I want to be speaker,’ he would do it. Other than that, I haven’t seen anybody that can guarantee it.”

There are famously Five Families warring inside the House Republican tent: the Tea Party-influenced House Freedom Caucus, the conservative Republican Study Committee, business-oriented Chamber of Commerce types, the moderate Republican Governance Group and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.