Insurrectionist in Charge

Last week House Republicans finally managed to select a new Speaker of the House to replace Kevin McCarthy. It took three weeks and several false starts to accomplish. They finally settled on Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson, a man who’s most outstanding accomplishment is having provided the legalese of what is essentially the dog ate my homework quality excuse for voting to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump which was then used by two thirds of the Republicans in the House.

Not only is Johnson an insurrectionist, he has voted for a nationwide ban on abortion with no exceptions and against same sex marriage. Johnson is one of the extremists even if he isn’t as loud as the first speaker candidate Jim Jordan, or Matt Gaetz who threw Kevin McCarthy under the bus.

In an interview with journalist Irin Carmon in 2015 Johnson said “Many women use abortion as a form of birth control, you know, in certain segments of society, and it’s just shocking and sad, but this is where we are. When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.” That’s a wild and evidence free connection between school shootings and abortion.

Johnson’s way out there conspiracy theory like ideas don’t stop there. He delivered a sermon at Christian Center of Shreveport in 2016 and claimed the United States was founded as a Christian nation but had gotten off track in recent years with the introduction of things like “no-fault divorce laws,” “legalized abortion,” and the teaching of evolution, per the MeidasTouch PAC.

Johnson then explained how in his addled mind this leads to mass shootings: “And people say, ‘How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?’ Because we’ve taught a whole generation, a couple generations now of Americans, that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest, and you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there’s nobody sacred to whom it’s owed. None of this should surprise us.”

In addition to voting for a nationwide abortion ban Johnson has co-sponsored three anti-abortion bills all of which carry criminal penalties of up to five years in prison for physicians who perform abortions.

In a September 2022, Johnson spoke about is ahistorical view of the doctrine of separation of church and state saying, “The founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around. If anybody tries to convince you that your biblical beliefs or your religious viewpoint needs to be separated from public affairs, you should politely remind them to review their history and you should not back down.” Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams all said differently.

When he was chair of the Republican Study Committee, which puts out budgets, last term Johnson proposed extreme cuts to programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The fact that the entire Republican caucus voted for an insurrectionist is another example of what I wrote a few weeks ago, voting for Republicans is voting for an authoritarian takeover of the country.

In my view Johnson’s best attribute is he has zero experience raising big campaign donations for his party which is one of the primary functions of the Speaker after setting the House agenda. Between his extremist views and lack of fundraising prowess he should be helpful in enabling a Democratic takeover of the House in 2024.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 1, 2023