Last week, every House Republican agreed that “mild-mannered” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) should be the man to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House.
Whether that party-line vote came from chaos fatigue (22 days without a leader) or the support of disgraced former president Trump is possibly a coin toss. After blackballing Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) who voted to certify the 2020 election, the legally challenged former president (91 felony charges) threw his support behind Johnson.
Johnson is much more than an everyday MAGA election denier. He was a member of Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment trial.
On January 6, 2021, Johnson proposed a legal-sounding argument (a “third option”) that provided cover for about three-quarters of the Republicans who refused to certify the election. The New York Times called him “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”
After his election as Speaker, Johnson refused to answer questions about his role in Trump’s big lie.
Bombastic, scandal-ridden Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the previous Trump-endorsed nominee, was a “significant player” in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, according to the House January 6th Committee. He spread lies about the election on FOX News, for example.
However, Johnson is the man who persuaded House members to vote againist certifying the election on January 6th.
Second, as the Financial Times notes, Johnson’s election “underscores [Trump’s] enduring influence over Capitol Hill, particularly as he seeks another four years in the White House.”
Those two strikes should have been enough for the moderate Republicans to continue opposing anointment of a MAGA speaker. It wasn’t.
A Biblical literalist
Johnson, 51, appears “mild-mannered“, unlike the rumpled (erh, coatless) Jordan.
That facade disguises a fanatical belief — Biblical literalism — that makes him the scariest of all the nominees. Only 1-in-4 Christians believe the Bible should be interpreted literally; only 1-in-5 Americans hold this belief. Johnson is a minority’s minority with outsized influence and power.
This minority group reflects an alarming challenge to democracy:
Christian nationalists sense that the nation is under cultural threat and biblical literalism provides an alternative (often anti-elite) source of information… [beliefs in ]Christian nationalism and biblical literalism) are also associated with higher levels of conspiracy thinking.
Another group of researchers found:
Christian nationalism solidifies ethnic boundaries around national identity such that Americans are less willing to acknowledge police discrimination and more likely to victim-blame, even appealing to more overtly racist notions of blacks’ purportedly violent tendencies to justify police shootings.
Biblical scholar and Episcipalian priest Dr. Wil Gafney warns against Biblical literalism thusly:
“But the Bible says…”
You better run whenever you hear those words. Run like the walking dead are coming after you.
Whenever someone tries to take 1300 years of literature written by different people in different periods for different purposes, edited in separate bundles then tied together in different canons of scripture so that not even we who are worshiping together in this room have the same number of biblical books in our scriptural tables of contents, and starts tal’mbout “the Bible says…”
You better run from that biblically illiterate a-contextual theology like it was witchcraft.
Johnson asserted his election was God’s will before quoting Romans 5:3-4:
“I was reminded of the Scripture that says ‘Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope,’” he said. “What we need in this country is more hope.”
What we need isn’t “more hope.”
What we need is a news ecosystem that clearly reports the state of the economy, eschews spin and stops treating fringe Republicans as though they represent a significant percentage of Americans.
U.S. economic output grew at an annual pace of 4.9 percent in the third quarter of this year, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, after adjusting for inflation and the usual seasonal patterns.
[T]hat’s more than double the pace from the prior quarter, the fastest rate of growth since late 2021, and light-years higher than economists had been expecting not too long ago…
[The economy is] also exceeding forecasts made even before the pandemic began.
Despite that remarkable report, Rampell notes that “Americans are about as negative about the U.S. economy today as they were during stretches of the Great Recession” in 2008, when unemployment was double today’s rate. In fact, independent voters trust Trump more than Biden on the economy, a clear indictment a complicit news ecosystem that fails to call out GOP propaganda.
Having the Speaker of the House — second in line to the presidency, after the Vice President (Presidential Succession Act of 1947) — be a member of such a conspiracy-minded culture and believe America is a “Christian nation” should be as frightening to you as a Utahraptor (the dominant carnivore 125 million years ago) would be if you ran into one today.
Violence is GOP currency
There is a reason multiple judges have limited what Trump can say publicly about his ongoing legal troubles.
In 2020, ABC News found “least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.”
Trump’s rhetoric sparked the January 6th insurrection.
The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be “wild.”
[…]
“People who we interviewed for the Jan. 6 investigation said they came to the Capitol because politicians and the president told them to be there. Politicians think that when they say things it’s just rhetoric, but people listen to it and take it seriously. In this climate politicians need to realize this and be more responsible.”
A few days later, one supporter called others to “KILL YOUR SENATORS: Slaughter them all.” A jury found that supporter guilty of “making a death threat against elected officials.”
Earlier in October, 23% of those responding to this statement – “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” – agreed with it. In March 2021, it was 15%.
A full one-third (33%) of Republicans say that violence may be the answer. That is ahead of the 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats who agree.
On Pete Santilli’s talk show, the conservative provocateur declared that if he were the commandant of the Marine Corps, he would order “every single Marine assigned to the Marine Corps barracks” to grab President Biden, “throw him in freakin’ zip ties in the back of a freakin’ pickup truck,” and “get him out of the White House” (emphasis added).
I’m fairly certain somewhere in MAGAland at least two people are discussing, quitely, not only what they will do when Trump is convicted in one or all of his trials … but also how hard could it be to knock off both the president and the vice president and elevate Johnson to the presidency.
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Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com