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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American power, politics and society.

On each episode, I will talk to an American expert or an expert on America

about something that's going on in America in 2023. Hello, welcome to Americano. My name is

Amber Athe. I'm the Washington editor for The Spectator World sitting in for Freddie this week,

and I'm thrilled to be joined by Daniel McCarthy.

He is the editor of Modern Age Journal as well as a columnist at The Spectator.

And he's here to help us break down this long protracted speaker battle among the House GOP members.

After about three weeks, they finally selected a new speaker to replace Kevin McCarthy.

His name is Mike Johnson.

And Daniel, I'd love it if you could start by just giving the listeners an idea of who this guy is.

Well, he's more conservative than Kevin McCarthy, which makes this.

Well, that's not hard to do.

But it does make this protracted, you know, process of finding a new

speaker, something of a success for the insurgents and for Matt Gates in particular

in deposing Kevin McCarthy. So, you know, Speaker Johnson, you know, comes from not necessarily

the Freedom Caucus. He wasn't a member of that. And he doesn't, you know, isn't

really on the cutting edge necessarily of the populist wing of the Republican Party. But he's a lot

closer to that wing than he, then, you know, Kevin McCarthy was. And he's really a substantial

step in the direction of, you know, the more populist or Trumpian version of the Republican Party.

...