A wolf in disguise

 The Republicans managed to elect a new Speaker of the House today after 3 weeks of chaos and turmoil. He is Mike Johnson of Louisiana, first elected to Congress in 2016. A far-right Trumpist conservative, and now 2nd in line to the presidential succession after Vice President Kamala Harris, his elevation to the speakership should send shivers up the spine of everyone who supports democracy.

In the British Parliament, he would be described as a back-bencher. He sits on two important House committees, Judiciary and Armed Services. He is also a member of the Republican Study Committee, a group of about 150 Republican House members who push conservative legislation. He is cozy with the House Freedom Caucus, a group of anarchists that include Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Scott Perry and other assorted bomb-throwers who were responsible for the nonsense of the past three-plus weeks and whose seeming raison d’etre is the obstruct and destroy the United States government. They favor the right-wing populism of autocratic leaders such as Trump, Viktor Orban and Jair Bolsonaro.

On Twitter today (or X, as Elon Musk has now styled it), Judd Legum noted today how this obscure politician has suddenly become very powerful and his Christofascist ideas that are his core set of beliefs. In the early 2000s, Johnson advocated for public schools to teach a course that taught the Bible “as an accurate record of history”; the Bible is no such thing at all. He backs the idea of covenant marriage, a thinly disguised way to insinuate religion into marriage. He is firmly against rights for LGBTQ people and has supported criminalization of sex other than between a man and a woman. He attempted as a legislator in Louisiana to overturn the rights of gays and lesbians to marry as same-sex spouses. 

As a Congressman, Johnson was very active in the scheme by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and was a signer of an amicus brief in the case Texas v. Pennsylvania, filed by Texas AG Ken Paxton, that claimed that other state’s election procedures were unconstitutional. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, although (predictably) Justices Alito and Thomas expressed interest in hearing the case (sometimes rationality wins over lunacy). 

Johnson is a global warming denier (his largest campaign contributions come from Big Oil). He is adamantly opposed to any form of gun control. And he supports a nationwide ban on all abortions. In short, when you add up the sum of the parts, he became Speaker because the Freedom (aka Freedumb) Caucus supported him wholeheartedly and there were no other Republicans with a spine to say no. The first thing he did was adjourn the House so Republicans can rest up after all the chaos they generated.

I hold little hope that this inexperienced leader can lead. I suspect his approach will be to placate his fellow right-wing fringe and will push for more obstruction and more damage to our democracy. I would say I pray I am wrong but I don’t believe in prayer. We will see how this works, if it does.