Republicans Through the Looking Glass
The new House speaker is an election denier high on the Trump Kool-Aid — and that’s not the worst of it
Just when it seemed they would never come together as a party to elect a new Speaker of the House, it happened. For the next five minutes, Republicans will do everything they can to pretend this is a meaningful step toward a functioning Congress.
Their first move after the vote was to hold a press conference designed to provide them with a veneer of respectability while assuring us of their willingness to compromise as they selflessly serve to protect the American people — it didn’t work.
When asked about newly-elected Speaker Mike Johnson’s opinion of the 2020 election, which he is on record as having fought to overturn, the seemingly well-behaved Republican mob near the dais began booing. Johnson did not answer the question, but one Republican woman standing in the front row of Johnson’s supporters told the reporter to “Shut up!”
What began as an attempt to portray themselves as a party of hope and promise ended feeling more like a bar room brawl waiting to happen. If the speech Johnson gave was intended to give Americans confidence in the competence of Republican members of the House, it failed.
Governing by proclamation
I’m reminded of Kevin McCarthy’s inane comment after becoming Speaker of the House. After 15 rounds of voting, McCarthy finally claimed the gavel, only to lose it nine months later. But in the moment, McCarthy was so proud. “Now we’ve learned how to govern,” he said.
If insanity masked as functionality is how Republicans define “governing,” then McCarthy was right. And if you listen to the public rhetoric of the man they just elected as speaker, you’d think he was Mitt Romney. He sounds measured, confident, and reasonable. But don’t be fooled. He knows what people want to hear, and that’s precisely why he is saying what he is saying in the wake of his victory.
The truth about Speaker Mike Johnson is not in the disingenuous comments made since he was elected to take over the leadership of the House. We must look at his prior statements to get that helpful information. After all, context is everything.
Speaker Johnson’s history of backward thinking
He believes the abortion industry is responsible for all our economic woes because it deprives the country of “able-bodied” workers.
He doesn’t believe people contribute to climate change and says wind and solar are “inefficient.” He also believes wind turbines “cause headaches, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction.”
He blames teaching evolution in schools for mass shootings — they have learned via Darwin that “there’s no right or wrong.”
He thinks democracy is dangerous because “majority rule is not always a good thing.”
Speaker Johnson’s ‘wish list’ for the future
He wants to cut Social Security and Medicare.
He wants to abolish abortion everywhere all the time and has pushed to sentence abortion providers to hard labor.
He wants to use the Bible to govern rather than the Constitution.
He supports anti-LGBTQ legislation, calling for schools to ban discussions of gender/sexuality.
The Good News
Naturally, liberal pundits are in an uproar over the Republicans’ choice of speaker, but they are wasting their energy. Speaker Johnson will do nothing more than continue advertising the Republican Party’s failure to govern.
If you are worried about what he might do to interfere in the 2024 election, you can relax. He will probably get tossed before he’s indicted, but if not, an indictment for election interference will likely end his short career in politics.
Even if he’s never indicted, as the movement to ban Trump from office takes shape in Colorado and is likely heading to SCOTUS, an election denier known to have participated in the January 6th insurrection events would also be disqualified. Johnson had taken an oath to the Constitution when he led the effort to refuse to certify the 2020 results, so if SCOTUS rules against Trump holding office, the same ruling would hold for Johnson.
If you doubt that SCOTUS will disqualify Trump, consider this bit of history: dictators tend to disempower higher courts — they don’t like challenges to their authority. Three justices may be grateful to Trump for their lifetime appointments, but they have nothing to lose by doing the right thing here — which is ensuring Trump never holds office again.
Republicans have another BIG problem
Trump is leading Republicans, and Trump does not have a strategy. He shoots from the hip without aiming, and he’s got the entire Republican Party ready to do whatever he asks. At Trump’s urging, they removed McCarthy as speaker, but they made a grave mistake. The new speaker has $83k in his leadership account — McCarthy had half a billion.
For people who like to portray themselves as financially savvy, replacing McCarthy with a bible-thumping misogynist who also happens to be broke was not a good move. (Not to dismiss the value of $83k — that’s a chunk in life — but not so much in politics).
It’s also not a good move for the 18 Republicans representing districts supporting President Biden. What does it say about the courage of their convictions when, after three embarrassing rounds of voting, Republicans tossed Jim Jordan as “too extreme,” only to vote unanimously for someone even more extreme?
There is no way for any of them to say they don’t own this—it was a unanimous vote — which means every House Republican in a district that voted for Biden in 2020 will likely be in trouble in the next election.
How did this happen?
In their panic to elect someone to lead the House, they forgot to vet their candidate. It’s astonishing when you think about it. Did they learn nothing from their failure to refuse to vet Trump properly?
Now they have someone proposing the kind of biblical terrorism we haven’t seen since women were thrown into the water for being witches and deemed guilty if they drowned (which they always did because nobody taught them to swim.)
What’s going to happen now?
I don’t know what’s next, but I’m betting that nothing Speaker Johnson is frothing at the mouth to force upon us is ever going to happen. The man is not charismatic, logical, or persuasive unless you are already indoctrinated. Even if Leonard Leo and other ultra-conservatives start funneling money to him, the only people Johnson can influence are the cult members of the Church of the Past. To the rest of the rational world, he is a practicing lunatic.
Yes, he does have the power to decide if a piece of legislation goes to the floor for a vote, but he does not have the power to sway voters. His limited tenure will represent a comical, though admittedly frightening, reminder of what happens when a misguided group appoints as leader a man who prefers the Dark Ages to the Information Age.
For this reason, I do not see Johnson as a threat — he is more like a gnat. He might prevent us from relaxing, but he won’t do any serious harm. He’ll simply finish the job of confirming for the American people the incompetence of House Republicans.
When people in power would rather argue about the nature of the territory than update their maps to incorporate the reality around them, they can’t help but fail. And the more they insist on the version of reality that lives only in their minds, the less capable they are of being useful or even relevant to those of us living in the real world — a world where both maps and ideas must constantly be adjusted if we are to face the challenges of modern times.
This is a rule of nature. When we fail at this, we will fail at everything. As always, there is only one solution to this problem: vote for Democrats. Until the Republican Party regains its sanity and lets go of Donald J. Trump, there is no other logical choice.