House Republicans are not done winning after their overall 2024 victory that left the Democrats in “disarray,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared on Monday.
Johnson delivered a bullish preview for his party in the years to come at the House GOP issues retreat at President Donald Trump‘s Doral resort in Florida.
He was joined by National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC), GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-MI), and Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL).
.@SpeakerJohnson: “We are going to win and grow the House majority in 2026. Historically when the president takes the Oval Office, then his party then loses on average a number of seats in the House in that first midterm. That won’t happen this time around…” pic.twitter.com/tTf0nBAmYD
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 27, 2025
“The Democratic Party is in disarray. They have no obvious leader. They have no obvious vision or agenda,” Johnson said.
“Their platform has to be rewritten whole cloth, and they don’t exactly know how they are going to wander in this wilderness for the next couple of years,” he added.
Democrats lost control of the Senate and the White House in last year’s election while they failed to crack the Republican majority in the House.
Johnson predicted that the amount of restructuring the Democrats need to do will blow past the 2026 midterms and into the 2028 presidential election.
“It’s not just gonna be a couple of years, though; it’s gonna be four years at least and then more because we are going to win — grow the House majority in 2026,” he said.
Republicans managed to retain control of the House in the 2024 election and currently have a 218-215 majority, giving leadership a slim margin in divisive votes.
There are two vacancies: one left by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and another by former Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), who is now Trump’s national security adviser.
Special congressional primaries in their districts are being held in Florida on Tuesday. The special general election has been scheduled for April 1.
Johnson acknowledged that, “Historically when the president takes the Oval Office, then his party then loses on average a number of seats in the House in that first midterm.”
Indeed, after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the Republicans then lost command of the House in the 2018 midterms as Democrats flipped 41 seats.
However, Johnson argued, “That won’t happen this time around because there has been a sea change. And we’re going to deliver on this agenda and that begins now.”
