The Mike Johnson Moment

May 14, 2024

These are heady days for Speaker Mike Johnson. He has taken political risks to avoid a government shutdown and fund aid to Ukraine, and he has survived the wrath of the nihilist faction within his caucus committed to subverting government at every turn with, one might suppose, the exception of wall building and deportation. These accomplishments required the votes of House Democrats, who put duty above politics, a rarity for that often feckless bunch and anathema for MAGAs. “We have to govern,” Johnson said to Ryan Lizza and Rachel Bade at Politico (Mike Johnson Told Us). In our dismal time these words sound almost statesmanlike.

The punditocracy and solons on both sides of the aisle give him favorable reviews for his performance. He is said to bargain in good faith and keep his word.

“I think he’s made some hard choices and he’s putting his job in peril as a result,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). “I don’t think I agree with him politically on anything, but I do think he has integrity. And I do think he’s acting like a leader.”
The administration has “been pushing and they think he has the insight and intelligence as well as the temperament to be a listener,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “I’m not sure that [former Speaker Kevin] McCarthy was a listener in the same way. But from what I hear, the White House has said they’ve had some fairly reasonable conversations, even if they didn’t agree.” (Cancryn, Haberkorn, How Johnson and Biden)

Some of the praise is faint, as in another Politico piece:

He is not someone who GOP politicians can torment with impunity. He has aligned himself with former President Donald Trump—indispensable for a Republican in his position—while not being treated like a golden retriever, as Trump did with “my Kevin.” He is disliked by Democrats, naturally, but not generally held in abject contempt.
He, in short, is not a Washington joke—or at least not as much of one as seemed possible when he took the speaker’s gavel almost by accident… (Harris, Bade, Mike Johnson is no)

Additional aid for Ukraine was desperately needed months ago. Johnson spoke of urgency but was slow to act. The blockhead caucus, which leans Putinist, stood ready to cancel the Republican majority in the House if not allowed to impose their will and abandon Ukraine to the tyrant. Credit is due Johnson for getting around that, criticism for failure to give more than lip service to the urgency of the matter. There is a parallel with Aileen Cannon’s conduct of the classified documents trial. Whether the dawdling was due to inexperience, incompetence, or something more sinister does not much matter in the end. The outcome is the same.

A.B Stoddard’s verdict on Johnson is harsh but accurate: “He is no hero. After the vote he said ‘We got to this as quickly as we could,’ which isn’t true. And Johnson will support Trump and all his Putin-pleasing, and continue to defend his lies.” She tempered this with acknowledgement that though it came late “Johnson rejected Trump’s dangerous isolationist policies on Ukraine and NATO and challenged them directly on the world stage.” In doing so he and his colleagues “prioritized liberty, and the preservation of the world order, over their own political futures” (Stoddard, Johnson Will Pay).

I have judged Mike Johnson harshly in the past and anticipate I will do so again momentarily. Funding the government and crossing the Putinist contingent in the Republican Party are no small things. Against this must be weighed his part in the effort to overturn the 2020 elections, promotion of unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, ties to Christian nationalists, dubious readings of the Constitution, and blithe dismissal of criminal cases against Trump as politically motivated “lawfare.” The list could go on.

Johnson “promoted legislation that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections in a press conference Wednesday, flanked by conservatives who have repeatedly questioned the results of the last presidential contest” (Adragna, Johnson pushes). (I bristle at usurpation of the term “conservative” by the likes of Chip Roy, Mike Lee, Cleta Mitchell, and Stephen Miller though that is now common usage.) “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections,” Johnson said. No evidence is offered, much less proof.

What evidence we have calls Johnson’s powers of intuition into question. It is already illegal for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election. A noncitizen who manages to register to vote is liable to prosecution and deportation. The Cato Institute reported that

a 2022 Georgia audit found that 2,258 persons lacking the proper citizenship qualification had attempted to register over a 25‐year period, according to database matching, but that the state’s screening methods had prevented them from completing those registrations and so none had voted. (Olson, The Right’s Bogus)

The Cato article also reminds us that “the Trump administration created a commission on voter fraud, which, like every other player that has investigated the issue, was unable to document large‐scale lawbreaking.”

For those not familiar with Cato, the institute describes itself as “a public policy research organization—or think tank—that creates a presence for and promotes libertarian ideas in policy debates.” Its mission “is to originate, disseminate, and advance solutions based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace” (About Cato). It is not exactly known for marching in lockstep with the liberal/left or mainstream media.

Johnson refuses to say what he would have done if he had been speaker in January 2021 when 2020 election results were certified. Amy Sherman at PolitiFact summarized his efforts aiding and abetting the attempt to overturn that election:

In December 2020, U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., sought to persuade Republican colleagues to sign an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to toss out results from four states.
Johnson voted against certifying the vote for Joe Biden in January 2021.
Johnson spread debunked falsehoods about voter fraud following the 2020 election. (Mike Johnson sought)

His assertion that “we have to make Biden a one-term president” should raise eyebrows regarding his intentions when the time comes to certify the 2024 presidential election. As I wrote last November, he did not say that Republicans must defeat Biden at the ballot box. He said, “We have to make Biden a one-term president.” By any means necessary is left unsaid. I look at his record and take him at his word (Johnson Endorses Trump).

I also take Johnson at his word when he aligns himself with the New Apostolic Reformation, a group that sees a Trump restoration as a means to replace constitutional governance and rule of law with a Christian nation-state under Biblical law as they, and they alone, interpret and understand it. In his first interview after being elected speaker, Johnson told Sean Hannity that the Bible is his worldview. Michael Sean Winters analyzed that comment and discussed the implications of Johnson’s viewpoint in National Catholic Reporter, where he wrote,

The Bible forms the worldview of all Christians, but it does so differently for some than others.
First, we note that Johnson did not say the Bible forms his worldview. He said it is his worldview. The lack of any sense of mediation has stalked Protestantism since Martin Luther nailed his theses to the chapel door in Wittenberg.
Johnson is assuming the meaning of the Bible is uncontested, that his interpretation is the only available one. He is unalert to the subjectivism of his reading of any particular text and is claiming for what may be a personal and even idiosyncratic reading…the full authority of the Scriptures. (Mike Johnson’s biblical worldview)

Olson goes on to challenge Johnson’s association of the teaching of evolution with the moral relativism he says is the reason for school shootings and his understanding of the “natural law philosophy” he says the founders espoused. Olson writes that his colleague Mark Silk “challenged Johnson's religious bona fides from a different angle: a gross misreading of the Hebrew Scripture” in an article at Religion News Service (The evangelical Christian activist). The Olson and Silk articles are both worth reading in full.

Johnson’s mild manner and occasional willingness to do right thing at some political risk to himself should not lead us to underestimate the clear and present danger he represents by virtue of the position he holds two heartbeats down from the Oval Office.

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Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt

David Matthews Portable Bohemia

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