I’m calling your attention to a rather long article because when Mike Johnson was selected as House Speaker after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster last year, I was impressed and thought he looked like a good (though surprising!) choice.
In retrospect, I got taken. We all did.
Johnson professes to be a conservative Christian whose worldview is based on the Bible (i.e. Judeo-Christian values), he used to work for the Alliance Defending Freedom (lots of work on freedom of religion cases), and one of the first things he did was ask the Republican caucus to pray with him.
All encouraging, but in the time he’s been Speaker he’s been indistinguishable from a Democrat when it comes to political will. He’s proven to be a major disappointment to conservatives and like-minded Republicans (and some Democrats) and, frankly, I’m embarrassed that I was so easily lured by his Christian credentials and my dutiful assumption they would translate into a wise and Christ-centered use of power.
I had to learn (again!) that it may look like a duck, talk like a duck and walk like a duck, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to govern like a duck.
Now Johnson is being told he should resign before he’s forced out, as reported in this exclusive Breitbart story.
Exclusive – MTG on Mike Johnson Speakership: ‘It’s Over – He’s Just the Only One Who Hasn’t Acknowledged It’
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Breitbart News exclusively that she is prepared to force House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) out of his position with a vote to vacate the chair if the Speaker does not willingly resign the position.
“Yes, I am willing to force it,” Greene told Breitbart News in a lengthy exclusive interview on Tuesday afternoon where she explained her plan to remove Johnson and get a real Republican Speaker in his place. “The reality for Mike Johnson that he just is not accepting or refusing to accept, publicly at least, is whether it happens two weeks from now, two months from now, or in the next majority, he will not be Speaker. He just will not be. There may be only two of us public right now. But he does not have the support of the conference at all. There may be people who might not vote to vacate him right now, but they will never vote for him to be Speaker next Congress. There are two large factions in the conference against his speakership.”
Lots of people see MTG as a nuisance, a political gadfly. She’s a huge Trump supporter and supported Kevin McLuntz before he was removed as Speaker. But I’m with her on this one.
A major development on Tuesday was that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), an influential conservative who sits on the powerful House Rules Committee, publicly joined Greene’s effort, saying he is cosponsoring her motion to vacate the chair. During a closed-door Republican conference meeting, Massie told Johnson to his face — in front of the entire House GOP conference — that he must resign or face the same fate his predecessor, now former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, did last year with a motion to vacate vote. Massie told Johnson, and later told reporters, that if Johnson does not agree to resign willingly he will likely lose even more votes than McCarthy did if and when the motion to vacate is called. Johnson responded to Massie in conference, and then later at a press conference, saying he will not resign — echoing what his spokesman Raj Shah told Breitbart News late last week when pressure began severely ramping up after Johnson was the deciding vote to kill an amendment to the renewal of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would have required the federal government obtain a warrant to engage in surveillance of American citizens. Johnson’s FISA ploy did provide such warrant protections only for members of Congress — protections that Johnson did not deem necessary for hundreds of millions of Americans not currently serving in the United States Congress.
I can’t reproduce the entire article for you, so I encourage you to go read the whole thing. Here’s what I’ll leave you with:
“From what I understand people were kind of down about it, or just ‘uh, not again’ because that three-and-a-half weeks was so painful for our conference and a lot of these Republicans don’t ever want to rock the boat or change the status quo,” Greene said. “That’s the whole problem. That’s why the Democrats keep winning and the Republicans keep losing, because Republicans never fight, because it’s uncomfortable, and Republicans never want to rock the boat. They just want to show up here in Washington and do their committee hearings and pass their legislation that they can hopefully get signed into law and hang it on their wall and then go back to their district and do whatever they do. But no one is ever taking the important and strategic steps to save our country. I’ll give you some examples. Out on social media today, there was an explosive report about an NGO that is passing out flyers to illegals encouraging them to vote for Joe Biden in the election. Everyone here, at the NRCC, our Republican conference, and many others, they’re busy practically measuring the drapes for the White House right now and totally convinced that Trump is going to win the election and ‘Marjorie, that’s when we’ll fix everything. We’ll do it then.’ But I’m going to tell you right now, I think that’s the worst possible mindset to be in. The Democrats are going to do everything possible to try to stop President Trump. They’re trying to put him in jail for the rest of his life right now. They’re going to do anything they can to make sure he does not win. So why in the world would our side just go along assuming that we’re going to win the White House and that’s when we’re going to stop all the millions of people invading our country and the terrorists coming across and the cartels bringing drugs and murdering our people and Americans being raped and murdered and killed, and the list goes on, and Americans being spied on through FISA? How do we sit there and look at ourselves in the mirror if we go ‘oh we’ll fix it when Trump comes back’? I don’t even think we deserve Republican voters voting for us if that’s our attitude. Here’s my biggest argument: If this is the state of mind of Republicans and Republican leaders, excluding President Trump, President Trump’s only on the ballot one more time — in November. Whether he wins or loses, what will the state of the Republican Party be after Trump? I’m going to argue strongly that Republicans in Congress and Republican leaders have not done anything to earn Republican votes for us to ever control the Republican majority ever again in the future. The only reason people will be voting for Republicans going forward is because they’re voting against Democrats. That is a very bad position to be in in the future.”
She’s right.
Time to dump Johnson.