Meet The Speaker Of The House

“The swamp is on the run, MAGA is ascendant, and if you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement, and where the power of the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.” — Congressman Matt Gaetz (MAGA-FL) talking about the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (MAGA-LA).

Last week House Republicans ended three weeks of bitter infighting, recriminations, and ignoring the people’s work by electing a new Speaker of the House. The unanimous Republican vote for Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana proved that the rabble rouser Gaetz was accurate in his assessment. The House Republican Party can only be considered a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump, Inc. and a solid MAGA institution. There are no moderates left on the Republican side of the House given that the support for “MAGA Mike” was without exception.

Note that Trump thoroughly controls the House through his MAGA acolytes. His autocratic control can be discerned from one telling event. Speaker Johnson was the Republicans’ fourth choice after they deposed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy — thrown out because he dared to pass bi-partisan legislation to keep the government functioning under a Continuing Resolution (CR). Their third choice was Congressman Tom Emmer of Minnesota. He had the votes of most of the caucus, but one social media post by an ex-president doomed his chances and his support evaporated before a formal vote on his Speakership. In other words, Trump vetoed Mr. Emmer from becoming Speaker. Trump supported Mr. Johnson and he became Speaker. Pretty simple. One person out of the government controls what happens with the party holding the majority in the House. It took them three weeks to figure out who would be the biggest MAGA champion, but they found their guy.

It appears that Speaker Johnson is a nice, polite, well-dressed individual with a pleasant smile. Do not let the packaging influence your opinion of what is inside. Here are a few examples.

He is labeled an “election denier” but it goes far deeper than that. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) called him “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.” He organized over 100 House Republicans to sign an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting an effort by the Texas Attorney General to throw out the results of the presidential vote in four swing states. The Supreme Court turned it down. In gathering support for that effort, Mr. Johnson sent an email to all Republicans in Congress explicitly saying that Trump asked him to recruit all of the Republicans to join the brief to the Supreme Court and that he would report those that sign on as Trump “will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review.” A not so subtle threat. When that didn’t work, he helped to organize the sedition caucus of Republicans that voted on 6 January 2021 to decertify the results of the election — after the capitol was attacked. He was an ardent advocate of the Dominion voting machine scam claiming that the machines came from “Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.” The very allegations that cost Fox News three-quarters of a billion dollars and for which increasing numbers of scammers are pleading guilty in court agreeing that they are all lied when they claimed that there was massive voting fraud.

This does not bode well for certifying the 2024 election results in the House.

One would think that this alone would disqualify anyone from becoming the second in line to the presidency — behind a president he apparently does not think is legitimate. When asked about this in recent interviews, he refused to answer.

But wait! There’s more!

For example, he is widely recognized as a right wing, white Christian nationalist, although he demurs when asked if that his world view. As he stated in a recent interview on Fox News, “I am a Bible believing Christian, …go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my world view.” Such a devotion to his religion is in itself not a problem. The problem is that he has worked most of his adult life to push his religious principles ahead of, and over-riding those of other religions or those that have no religious belief at all. His states is that the U.S. was founded on Christian principles and that the Constitution is really a Christian document, but a Christianity that he defines. To him, our constitutional republic was established by the Founding Fathers because “they followed the Biblical definition of what a civil society is supposed to look like.” He is vigorously opposed to same-sex marriage, LGBTQ rights and the influx of immigrants (not just border control but who is allowed to enter the U.S.).

After the mass shooting in Lewiston Maine he said in response to a question about stricter gun laws that “The end of the day, it’s, the problem is the human heart. Its not guns. Its not weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment.” A few years ago, in his speeches (some call them sermons) he blamed school gun violence on various social issues including abortion, divorce and the teaching of evolution.

There is more, but it is clear that he is far to the right and in perfect alignment with MAGA principles. As to governing, we will see. He has little experience in any government leadership position having never even chaired a full committee within the House of Representatives. The coming months are going to be difficult for our country as we still need to fund the government, decide on aid to Israel and Ukraine and deal with the many issues that continue to languish in the House for lack of action because the MAGA agenda is Hunter Biden’s laptop and not much else.

Some might argue that having anyone as Speaker is better than having no Speaker at all. Well, with “MAGA Mike” we may have just gotten exactly what we asked for.