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Here’s a conundrum for Republican politicians going into 2026, and even 2028. What do you do when you’ve turned the GOP into a Trump-branded, populist, antiestablishment party but you now control the government and it’s not going very well?

One time-tested answer: ritual human sacrifice. Which is why the next year is going to be a miserable one for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Let’s set the scene.

The job of speaker never really has been nonpartisan. What’s changed in recent decades is that more and more power has been concentrated in the speaker’s office while, at the same time, the speaker is expected to defer to the president’s agenda when the same party holds the White House. T

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