House Speaker Mike Johnson is doing for Kevin McCarthy what disgraced former president Donald Trump did for James Buchanan: keep him from being the worst in history.
Under his brief leadership, the dysfunctional 118th Congress has been even more broken. For a party that won the last election on a promise to govern, it has produced little beyond infighting, hyper-partisanship, and disarray. Not the kind of achievements voters should reward in November.
Johnson told the National Association of Christian Lawmakers that God chose him as a Moses to lead the Congress because “we’re coming to a Red Sea moment.”
Historian Michael Beschloss says it’s more like Johnson is Trump’s messenger. “Great House speakers in history did not behave like a ventriloquist’s dummy,” he wrote. The speaker’s open line to Trump for instructions has earned him the nickname MAGA Mike, and his greatest fear may be that the same extremists who gave him McCarthy’s gavel will take it away from him.
He is trying to keep his job while negotiating with Democrats for another temporary spending deal to avoid a costly government shutdown in the face of demands from his party’s anti-governing extremists who want their poison pills injected into the legislation.
Many of the hardline conservatives, who openly want to see a shutdown, are convinced that their brinkmanship will force the Democrats to cave in. It is a flawed strategy with a historic tendency to backfire, potentially costing the GOP a hefty price at the next election.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina), who was acting speaker in October, has accused Johnson of blocking progress on key issues like border security, the budget, and aid to Ukraine out of fear of Trump and the farthest Right faction. The twice-impeached former president has ordered Johnson to block bipartisan action on border security because he wants inaction as a campaign issue.
The Trump albatross is just one reason Johnson may well go down as the worst speaker in history. It doesn’t help that he got the gavel only months after it was in the hands of one of the most powerful and effective speakers in history, Nancy Pelosi. And he is reminded of his weakness when he goes to his office at 568 Cannon House Office Building, which is named for another powerful speaker, Joseph Cannon, an Illinois Republican.
An extremist politician
MAGA MIKE is an election denier, a religious extremist, anti-abortion crusader, and a “raging homophobe.”
The latter appellation is from Meghan McCain, the daughter of former Sen. John McCain and a staunch conservative. Johnson has an extensive record in print and the courts as an outspoken opponent of LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage.
In court briefs, newspaper articles, and elsewhere he has advocated for the right of states to criminalize same-sex consensual sex, insisting: “There is clearly no ‘right to sodomy’ in the Constitution” and claimed decriminalizing gay sex could lead to the legalization of prostitution and illicit drug-use.
As a congressman, he not only voted to overthrow the 2020 presidential election but played a leading role as a Trump attorney in the failed court battles to advance the big lie. The New York Times called him “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections,” despite never producing any evidence to support his claims of voter fraud.
His pre-Congress law career was devoted to tearing down the wall of separation between church and state. It still is. “The separation of church and state is a misnomer. People misunderstand it,” he told CNBC.
A Jewish family in Bossier Parish Louisiana sued Stockwell Place Elementary public school claiming their children were “ridiculed and bullied” for not participating in classroom prayer sessions and Christian singing. Johnson, the school’s attorney, called the Jewish family’s lawsuit the “radical Left’s desperate efforts to silence all public expressions of religious faith.“
It was “spiritual warfare,” he warned, “The ultimate goal of the enemy is silencing the gospel,” the HuffPost quoted Johnson. The school superintendent told the family, “This is the way things are done in the South.” They moved away.
When a reporter asked about this case 20 years later, a Johnson staffer pointed out that the first bill the new speaker brought to the House floor was a show of support for Israel and condemnation of Hamas after October 7. It’s nice to know he supports Israel, which badly needs its own wall of separation between religion and state, but his clear homophobia and intolerance are unlikely to sway many Jewish voters.
Two weeks ago, Johnson spoke at a GOP leadership retreat. His message sounded like a sermon, some colleagues complained. Instead of discussing his vision for the party’s congressional agenda, he spoke about moral decline in America, declining church membership, and the nation’s shrinking religious identity, NBC reported.
His domestic record of extremism poses a clear and present threat to the First Amendment and the Constitution and to the United States, not to mention religious minorities – like the Jewish community.
Looking abroad, Johnson’s hands are stained with Ukrainian blood. He has blocked the Senate’s bipartisan aid package for Ukraine even though it passed the Senate 70-29, and most observers say it will easily pass the House.
The bill – which also includes aid for Israel, Taiwan, and border security – is opposed by Trump.
Trump has told Johnson to do nothing on border security because he wants to be able to accuse Democrats of failing to act on the problem. Ukraine is also part of the former president’s retribution agenda. As this column has noted, Trump blames Ukraine for his first impeachment since President Volodymyr Zelensky refused his demand for political dirt on the Biden family. Trump also wants to see Biden suffer a defeat in that war and, as Sen. Mitch McConnell pointed out, inaction would be a victory for Vladimir Putin.
A White House spokesman said Johnson’s refusal to bring Ukraine aid to a vote is “actively benefiting Putin and the ayatollahs” by “enabling Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Unlike the GOP of the last 70 years, the MAGA cult, with Johnson as its highest elected official, has become openly and proudly bigoted, isolationist, and xenophobic. The fate of Ukraine is one more failure of a once-great political party’s descent into a cult of personality.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former American Israel Public Affairs Committee legislative director.