It was inevitable that when the Republican Conference finally settled on a nominee for House Speaker who could garner enough floor votes to win the gavel, the corporate media would portray him as an extremist. Imagine, then, the sheer glee with which they received the news that Mike Johnson was to be nominated by the GOP and would probably become the new Speaker of the House. Johnson was not merely an unapologetic Christian, a genuine conservative, and a proud Trump supporter — the Louisiana congressman was that most reviled of all Republicans — an “election denier.”
So, Speaker Johnson is guilty of being a Christian, a fringe religious sect with only 2.6 billion adherents.
Never mind that the Democrats declared the 2000, 2004 and 2016 elections illegitimate, any GOP skepticism about the 2020 outcome is somehow illegitimate in and of itself. And Johnson was indeed skeptical. As a constitutional lawyer, he knew that officials in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin had violated the U.S. Constitution and their own state laws by altering election statutes with no legal authority to do so. Johnson and 125 other House members summarized this charge in an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs in Texas v. Pennsylvania, a Supreme Court case contesting results in those states.
The legislature of every Defendant state had established detailed rules by which that state’s appointment of presidential electors should have been conducted. However, in the months before the 2020 election, those rules were deliberately changed by both state and non-state actors. The clear authority of those state legislatures to determine the rules for appointing electors was usurped at various times by governors, secretaries of state, election officials, state courts, federal courts, and private parties.
The justices, no doubt with Bush v. Gore in mind, rejected the case without reviewing its merits. Nonetheless, Johnson’s objections to Pennsylvania’s legally dubious election rule changes were such that he joined the 138 House members who voted not to certify the Commonwealth’s slate of electors in 2020. Yet Johnson remained uncontroversial until last week when he was nominated for Speaker and elected with unanimous Republican support. Indeed, even after he captured the Speakership, Bloomberg reported the news under this headline: “Republicans Pick Some Guy to Be Speaker of the House.” (READ MORE from David Catron: SCOTUS Takes Up Free Speech Case)
Now, however, this little known backbencher has suddenly become a dangerous extremist. As Paul Krugman puts it in the New York Times, “Johnson’s extremism, and that of the party that chose him, goes beyond rejecting democracy and trying to turn back the clock on decades of social progress.” Forget the weeks of agony the GOP endured to find a leader acceptable to all factions of their party. Amy Gardner describes the new Speaker to her Washington Post readers as “a ringleader of efforts to overturn Biden’s victory” and avers that it was this sinister role in the “insurrection” that led to his elevation to the Speakership.
That position as an organizer of efforts to undermine the 2020 vote, in fact, is probably a key reason for his ascension. The caucus had balked the day before at elevating Tom Emmer (Minn.), who was among the minority of House Republicans that voted to certify Biden’s win. Johnson’s bid was also aided by a genial nature that contrasted sharply with pro-Trump firebrand and ally Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), whose quest for speaker sputtered after moderates refused to back him.
This is the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” theory advanced by renowned political scientist Joy Behar. The View featured a segment last Thursday during which Behar delivered herself of this pearl of wisdom: “Here’s the thing: He looks mild mannered. Yeah, he has the glasses, but at least Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan have the decency to look evil.” Sadly, this stuff appears in once respectable publications as Time, where Andrew Whitehead writes that Johnson is a Christian Nationalist. Whitehead admits that the new Speaker has never identified himself as such, yet regards his frequent public references to God as incriminating.
So, Speaker Johnson is guilty of being a Christian, a fringe religious sect with only 2.6 billion adherents, including a mere 87.8 percent of our congressional representatives. He is also a conservative, an ideological cohort that Gallup reports as larger (4 in 10) than their liberal counterparts and steadily growing. He is also an unapologetic supporter of former President Trump, whose poll numbers are remarkably high compared to those of President Biden, who is now less popular than Hillary Clinton. Finally, Johnson has been branded an “election denier,” a growing faction that now (no kidding) includes Amazon’s Alexa. (READ MORE: The High Price of Historical Illiteracy)
It’s going to be difficult to convince American voters that our new House Speaker is Dr. Evil. And everyone would breathe a sigh of relief if he only demanded $1 million from us for cleaning up the pig’s breakfast the Democrats have made in Washington.
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