Dan Rather: Mike Johnson Was ‘Cheerleader For the End Of American Democracy’ No Normalizing That Fact

This is the strangest good news/bad news scenario I have seen in my life: Yes, it’s good news that after three weeks and three candidates that were put up and summarily shot down for the role of Speaker of the House Of Representatives, that finally the GOP conference came together and unanimously elected someone. The bad news is that the guy they elected is a full-throated election denier and coup-plotter. The implications of that are beyond bad. They’re catastrophic.

Dan Rather is not a man to mince words. In his Substack post yesterday he cut straight to the chase.”If the elevation of Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson to the speaker’s gavel with unanimous Republican support counts as compromise within the party’s caucus, it reinforces what we already knew — this nation faces grave threats to its constitutional order, because one of our two major political parties has embraced autocratic extremism.” Autocratic extremism and theocratic madness. The Constitution mandates the separation of church and state and Johnson glibly blows past that clause like it doesn’t exist — because for him it doesn’t.  You need to see this if you haven’t already.

Johnson: I believe that scripture and the bible is very clear that god is the one that raised up each of you and god has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment and time. pic.twitter.com/9mFfHjNzHr

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 25, 2023

Back to Dan Rather:

This is not hyperbole. [the words “autocratic extremism.] The person who rallied his party to make him second in line to the presidency was a cheerleader for the end of American democracy. There should be no normalization of this fact.

In the wake of President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, the vast majority of the Republican Party fell in line behind Donald Trump’s attempts to destroy one of the most sacrosanct features of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. We all know what came next, including a violent attempted coup that swarmed the Capitol on January 6. On that day, 139 Republican members of the House of Representatives (including Johnson) voted not to certify the election. It marked arguably the greatest threat to the continuation of the republic since the Civil War.

The new speaker of the House might not be well known by the American public. But he was an influential leader of the movement to deny the will of the people and their selection of president. In late 2020, Johnson pushed House members to sign on to a lawsuit, filed by Texas, that would have thrown out the votes in key battleground states — in essence disenfranchising millions of Americans. To call this ridiculous legal maneuver “fringe” is insufficient. This wasn’t just “out there.” This was the legal equivalent of orbiting Pluto. Even the reactionary right-wing Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Full stop. This is one of those times to go back and reread a paragraph to see if you actually understood it right. We have a Speaker now that colluded with Donald Trump to overthrow the government. Jim Jordan was allegedly disqualified because of this very thing being the bridge too far, the place where even a fractured GOP could not go. But then they turn around and elect this guy? And you’ve seen this clip of elder stateswoman Virginia Foxx, when a reporter had the hubris to ask about Johnson’s rampant election denial.

Reporter: You help lead the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, do you—

Republicans: *boo* shut up pic.twitter.com/L7R5fwhpIi

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 25, 2023

Writes: Nick Catoggio:

That’s the whole party in one clip. There’s Johnson, smug at having been not merely absolved by his colleagues for abetting a coup attempt but commended for it with their nomination for speaker. There’s Scalise and Elise Stefanik, two members of leadership leering like gargoyles at the idea that they should care about the party’s turn toward insurrectionism. And there’s Virginia Foxx, one of the elder statesmen in the conference, goading the press to just shut up about it already.

Participants, enablers, apologists. That’s the House GOP. They’ve moved on from their attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power, they’re eager for you to know —unlike a certain someone for whom they’ll all be campaigning three or four months from now.

Friends, this is the death knell of democracy, right here. And that’s not hyperbole either. How else can you call this? Back to Johnson’s insane amicus brief.

But the purpose of the lawsuit wasn’t just to deny Biden the presidency. It was to delegitimize a legitimate election. And all you have to do to understand how successful this movement has been is to see Mike Johnson now sitting in the speaker’s chair.

It should be noted that Johnson holds the speakership despite espousing extremely radical views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. He also seems to be following Trump’s lead in wanting to stymie U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. That these views were not disqualifying for a single Republican member — including those purported “moderates” who come from districts Biden won — shows how the party marches in lockstep with radicalism and in the opposite direction of where a majority of Americans want the nation to go.

In the days before Republican elected officials crowned an architect of authoritarianism to lead the House, several of the Trump lawyers who helped orchestrate the specious legal rationale for the coup were busy pleading guilty in the conspiracy case of election interference in Georgia. Georgia, it turns out, was one of the states where Speaker Johnson wanted votes to be thrown out.

In their plea deals, the Trump lawyers had to admit what was obvious from the beginning: All the attempts to steal the election were built on lies. The rule of law seems to be closing in on Trump. And it is being fueled by the truth.

Yet the Big Lie continues to fuel Republicans outside of the courtroom, and especially in the halls of Congress. This puts our nation in peril. We are at a point where the very thing that should most disqualify someone from political leadership in America — the desire to destroy our democracy — has become the litmus test for the speaker of the House.

Also from Wednesday, this is what Matt Gaetz said to Steve Bannon: “If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.” 

Absolutely correct. MAGA now rules the Republican party. Charlie Sykes, the Bulwark:

Matt Gaetz may be loathed and detested by his colleagues, but in the end, it was Gaetz and his fellow members of the Crazed Slavering Jackal Caucus who feasted on the carcass of the GOP normies.

Gaetz and his confederates blew up the House, destroyed Kevin McCarthy, torpedoed Steve Scalise, and watched Trump shiv Tom Emmer. They bullied. harassed, and exhausted the majority, and on Wednesday they got a full-throated election denier and coup-plotter as speaker.

For a few halcyon moments, it looked like the center would hold as a modest rump of “moderates” blocked the ludicrous Jim Jordan. But in the end, the squishes did what squishes do; and their defeat was as comprehensive as it was condign.

Adam Kinzinger describes the fifth-string Johnson as “Jordan in drag.” Or at least a jacket. But the distinction hardly matters.

Gaetz has given Trump his speaker.

As I explained yesterday, Johnson is no garden variety election denier. The NYT described him as “the most important architect” of the attempt to overturn Trump’s electoral college loss. In December 2020, he was in close contact with Trump about the (bogus) lawsuit that would have thrown out tens of millions of votes.

But even this understates the case.

Johnson fully-embraced the wooliest of the Kraken-level conspiracy theories including the bizarre lie that voting software came from “Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.”

In a radio interview days after the November 2020 vote, Johnson said:

“In every election in American history, there’s some small element of fraud, irregularity, error. We just know that. You just accept that that’s the case,” acknowledged Johnson before pressing on:

But when you have it on a broad scale, when you have, you know a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. When you have, you know, testimonials of people like this but in large numbers, it begs to be litigated and investigated. And the problem is, it’s exceedingly difficult to do that in a 45-day time window. You know, and that’s the problem that we’re up against.

And that’s why the president is so frustrated and that’s why so many, so many 71, 73 million Americans around the country feel like  the election was stolen from them.

“The allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion. Look, there’s a lot of merit to that. And when the president says the election is rigged, that’s what he’s talking about,” remarked Johnson at another point.

In another instance, Johnson said that his colleagues from Georgia were “so frustrated they want to pull their hair out” because “they know that in Georgia it really was rigged.”

Those were the kind of lies that cost Fox News $787 million; and that resulted in felony indictments for the biggest peddlers — and now guilty pleas from Jenna Ellis, Sydney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro.

For Mike Johnson, however, they were a ladder.

On Wednesday not a single Republican voted against him. Not one. Not Mike Gallagher. Not Ken Buck. Not Mike Lawler.

Not one of the normies who rail about Trump’s insanity caucus in private; not one of the representatives who knows that Gaetz is a walking political hemorrhoid. Every one of them fell into line.

Democracy — at least in the Republican caucus in the House Of Representatives, October 2023 — went out, not with a bang, but with a whimper, as every last one of them fell into line. We now have a man, second in line to the presidency, who tried to overthrow that very presidency. Let us vote the GOP out of House control, not to further partisan legislative interests, but in order to insure our very survival as a democracy. This is where we are as Election 2024 draws near. My God.