CNN’s Tapper: Speaker Mike Johnson’s ‘Ideology Is Very Far to the Right’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Wednesday on CNN’s “News Central” that newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) “ideology is very far to the right.”

Tapper said, “I have known Mike Johnson, Speaker Johnson, for about 18 year. I covered a story in Louisiana back in 2005. There was a parish that kept on bringing Christian priests into their parish to do school prayer, even though courts kept on telling them not to do so. And the ACLU kept on challenging the school district in that parish to stop.”

He continued, “And he was, Mike Johnson at the time worked for a conservative group called the Alliance Defense Fund, I believe it was called. And at the time, I remember being impressed at how smooth an operator he was. And at how he was able to present very conservative viewpoints, very religious conservative viewpoints, in a very mild-mannered and smooth way. And I remember thinking, this is going to be a congressman someday.”

He added, “I did not, I will confess, did not think he would be speaker of the House within 20 years of that moment. But it’s not entirely a surprise that he has risen so quickly. He has an ability to seem a lot more main stream than I think his ideology actually is. So, it is not entirely a surprise that he has been able to rise so quickly. And I think the American people will see, he seems very mild mannered. He’s very smart, he’s very charming.”

Tapper concluded, “His ideology is very far to the right. He’s very conservative. He is a true believer. And it will be very interesting to see if that’s a liability for him, given the fact that I think the center of his party is actually, probably, not as conservative as him. The center of the country is certainly much more close to the center. I don’t know that it will be a liability for him at all. It will be interesting to see.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN