Herblock, the political cartoonist of the Forties through the Seventies who severely criticized Richard Nixon, said that even Nixon would get a clean shave after Nixon became President and so Nixon would be judged on the basis of what he did after he was elevated to that office. I approached Jim Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, in the same light, giving him the benefit of the doubt when, in his inaugural speech, Johnson was filled with high sounding religious invocations. Johnson said that in the Declaration of Independence God had created men as equal rather, I suppose, than that rights are a human creation, but Christians are often unfamiliar with or find it incomprehensible that Jefferson was a Deist who thought the rules of nature are the only things that apply. Johnson also said that public officials have been anointed by God, which I took to mean that when elected officials had a supernatural mandate, they should meet the highest moral standards in their legislative crafting, eschewing petty matters,so as to be Godly. So Johnson’s opposition to same sex marriage and abortion could be read as taking seriously the most important and fundamental matters and so to be respected even if I disagree with him.
My willingness to be respectful to Johnson lasted all of twenty four hours. It ended when he said that his only response to the mass murder in Lewiston, Maine was that it should be addressed with prayer concerning the evil amidst people. No legislation required. Johnson certainly doesn’t think only prayers should be addressed to the evils of abortion. He wants laws concerning it enacted. But no laws on gun control or even just quicker interventions to take away guns from mentally ill and dangerous people. So Johnson is just the same old MAGA Conservative, with Trump credentials, rather than one of the high minded religious sorts. His religion is not independent of the shibboleths of the Right about gun control, which believes that people have a right to bear arms so as to protect the people from a national army. But if that was the case, they would not stop at allowing people to have assault rifles rather than the rifles carried in the Revolutionary War. They should allow citizens to arm themselves with tanks and howitzers so as to attack the Pentagon, should that be needed. But I doubt many gun owners would accept that, and so what are the limits of gun control? As far as I have heard, Johnson doesn’t say.
Johnson is now second in line after the President, and he does not accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election and so would disrupt the orderly succession of power that has existed up to then since the time of the Constitution. Representative Matt Gaetz says that the other side should recognize the Republicans are the party of Trump. I am willing to recognize that such is the case, however sad that might be to acknowledge. The “moderate” Republican members of the House are said to have caved into the extreme of the party because they are indecisive and cowardly and confused and exhausted but I think they think of party over nation and so cannot go to Jeffries and get elected a Republican Speaker who will do limited things like money for Israel and Ukraine and Taiwan and the southern border and a continuing resolution until the next year and nothing much else until the 2024 election, however unprecedented it would be to have coalition government in the House, even if constitutional, but because the Republicans could not organize themselves except under the leadership of an extremist. Who said Trump wasn’t in charge? The GOP doesn’t need tweaking; it needs an overhaul if it is to be regarded as a legitimate party.