The Conservatives won the battle for the position of Speaker of the House. Did they also endanger the Republican majority?

House Republicans elected the most conservative president of the last century by some measures, the first to identify so forcefully as both a budget hawk and a champion of right-wing social values. The question now is whether a party this far to the right, with a speaker to match, can maintain control of its House majority in a competitive election year.

As soon as GOP lawmakers voted unanimously Wednesday to give Rep. Mike Johnson speaker’s gavel, Republicans in swing political districts, who need independent and Democratic votes to win re-election, have begun to define the little-known Louisiana lawmaker as someone widely acceptable to Americans — a Republican to the former devoted to familiar conservative causes, such as taxation. restraint and national security.