As House Majority Whip Tom Emmer scrambled to secure support from Republican members in the race for House speaker, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman reported that there was considerable “buzz” within the GOP conference about electing Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson. Four minutes later, Sherman’s colleague, John Bresnahan, added that “several” House Republicans believed Johnson was the “only” member of the conference who could win on the House floor.

The problem was not with the reporting. On the contrary, the Capitol Hill reporters got the story exactly right. Rather, the problem was with the timing: Johnson, just two hours earlier, had lost an intraparty election to Emmer. In the final round of balloting, it was a two-man race — and the post-election “buzz” was about the guy who came in second.

Nevertheless, Johnson’s proponents managed to turn defeat into victory. Roughly four hours after Emmer became speaker-designate, he quit in the face of unyielding opposition from members of his own party. At that point, the desperate GOP leadership announced plans for yet another intraparty election, which as NBC News reported, culminated in a Johnson nomination.

Rep. Mike Johnson, a relatively little-known Louisiana Republican and low-ranking member of the GOP leadership team, became the party’s latest nominee for House speaker Tuesday night after three other hopefuls fizzled out. … A floor vote could happen as soon as Wednesday afternoon.

If the procedural dynamic sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination: Two weeks ago today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise defeated House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to become speaker-designate. Soon after, many Republican members balked at the party’s nominee, forcing the winner to quit, and leading the second-place finisher to advance.

Now, the exact same thing has happened.

That said, the end result might prove to be entirely different. While Jordan faced considerable pushback from much of the GOP conference — enough to derail his bid — Johnson appears to enjoy broader support from Republicans, and his odds of success are better. We’ll see soon enough whether five or more GOP members vote for someone else, but as the day gets underway, the conventional wisdom suggests Johnson has a realistic chance of holding the gavel before Wednesday ends — in part because he doesn’t have many enemies, and in part because the party is simply exhausted and terrified of letting the process drag out further.

And at that point, a great many Americans will probably ask an understandable question: Who’s Mike Johnson?

Those who follow Congress closely might’ve seen his name pop up in a variety of recent stories. The Louisiana Republican, for example, recently pressed Attorney General Merrick Garland on a misguided conspiracy theory involving the Justice Department and Hunter Biden. Johnson was also an early proponent of trying to “expunge” Donald Trump’s first impeachment. What’s more, the speaker-designate has pushed for a national abortion ban.

But one part of Johnson’s record stands out as especially important. NBC News reported:

While almost all the men who were running to be speaker this week voted to overturn the 2020 election results, Johnson was a bit more active than some of the others. In 2020, he helped get fellow House GOP members on board to sign an amicus brief supporting a Texas lawsuit that would have invalidated the election results in key states. CNN reported at the time that Johnson sent an email from his personal account to every House Republican. More than 125 eventually signed on.

In other words, state Attorney General Ken Paxton came up with a crackpot theory in the hopes of overturning an American presidential election, and Johnson took the lead on Capitol Hill to rally support for the indefensible effort.

A year ago this month, The New York Times described Johnson as “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”

After Johnson won his intraparty election, ABC News’ Rachel Scott asked the speaker-designate about the most important part of his congressional record. The important and worthwhile question was not well received.

To treat this question as somehow out of bounds, and to quite literally boo a journalist and tell her to “shut up” for asking a legitimate question, said quite a bit about the state of the House Republican conference.