It was smiles all around late yesterday afternoon as GOP caucus members gathered to support their latest sacrificial lamb…er…nominee in the most contentious and potentially consequential contest for the House Speakership in U.S. history.
The next Speaker of the House will be, despite some flights of fantasy, a Republican, but it will be up to the sane wing of the Republican Party (an exceedingly small caucus to be sure, but large enough to doom a candidate for Speaker) to withstand what I believe will be a furious press by allies of the Great Orange Gropinfuhrer to whitewash and dry clean Louisiana congressman Mike Johnson, who was the chief behind the scenes architect of Congressional Republicans’ effort to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and to elect him the new Speaker.
Johnson also subscribes to The Independent State Legislatures Theory, a scheme which Republicans, who will still be in power after the 2024 election, will try to use to coronate Trump in the event he loses to Biden again.
Oh, and Johnson supports a National abortion ban, repealing gay marriage rights, stopping all aide to Ukraine and continuing to spit shine Trump’s plus-size posterior. But, unlike Jim Jordan, he packages all that ugliness in an affable and agreeable approach in his personal relationships, including with democrats. There will also be, I believe, a big push to highlight that side of his personality.
Following the 2020 election The New York Times
had this to say about his efforts to come to Trump’s rescue:
“While most House Republicans had amplified Mr. Trump’s claims about the election in the aftermath of his loss, only the right flank of the caucus continued to loudly echo Mr. Trump’s fraud allegations in the days before Jan. 6, The Times found. More Republican lawmakers appeared to seek a way to placate Mr. Trump and his supporters without formally endorsing his extraordinary allegations. In formal statements justifying their votes, about three-quarters relied on the arguments of a low-profile Louisiana congressman, Representative Mike Johnson, the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.
On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, he presented colleagues with what he called a “third option.” He faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional, without supporting the outlandish claims of Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters. His Republican critics called it a Trojan horse that allowed lawmakers to vote with the president while hiding behind a more defensible case.
Even lawmakers who had been among the noisiest “stop the steal” firebrands took refuge in Mr. Johnson’s narrow and lawyerly claims, though his nuanced argument was lost on the mob storming the Capitol, and over time it was the vision of the rioters — that a Democratic conspiracy had defrauded America — that prevailed in many Republican circles.”
Of his (and Trump’s) current efforts Newsweek writes:
“In a follow-up ballot on Tuesday, House Republicans voted to replace Emmer with Johnson, a staunch Trump supporter who took steps to overturn the 2020 election results which was won by President Joe Biden. Whether Johnson will suffer the same fate as Reps. Emmer, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan in not being able to get the almost unanimous backing from his own party in order to get elected House speaker remains to be seen.
Johnson, 51, an attorney, has long been a close ally of Trump during his time in Congress, including serving in the former president’s legal defense team during his two impeachment trials in the Senate.
The Louisiana congressman was one of 147 House Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 election results in favor of Biden on January 6, 2021.
In a November 7, 2020 post on Twitter, now called X, Johnson said he called Trump after Biden was declared the winner of the election and told the former president: “Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.”
Well, Johnson, myself and well over half of the country do not need our “trust” in the fairness of our election system restored as it obviously worked just fine in 2020.
Be that as it may, with Trump poisoning the well against any candidate for Speaker who dares to not lavish his orange ass with kisses, the pressure for moderate Republicans to cave and election this yahoo Johnson today, will be in my opinion, unprecedented.
If he succeeds, Johnson will be as much of a threat to our Democracy as Trump himself.
Phuck that nazi wrapped in an American flag paid for by the blood of HEROS! In another time he would have been shot by one of my five uncles who fought in WW2. One crawled on his belly across France shooting mutherfuckers like this pissant. At least the nazis he shot didn’t hide behind a suit parsing words to achieve Hitler’s campaign. They, at least, had the guts to put THEIR ass on the line. These nazis don’t even deserve to be called nazis. They are excrement…soulless little boys seeking to enrich themselves. I hope he falls on the steps of the halls of congress and BREAKS HIS GODDAMN NECK. Maybe then I might actually start to believe in justice.
Having gazed at this picture again, it reminds me of the picture at the end of The Shining…where all the evil entities are gathered together around Jack Nicholson at a New Year Eve’s party. All rich white phuckers, “eating and drinking, thinking they’ve got it made.”(Dylan).
I do wish you would stop using ‘coronate’ – the word just doesn’t exist.
A monarch is CROWNED at a coronation
(coronate sounds like a fizzy drink)
It seems that ‘coronate’ does exist – but not as a verb:
From WSU
coronate
A person is crowned, not coronated. “Coronate” is improperly derived from “coronation,” but “crown” is the original and still standard form of the verb.
But don’t be in too big a hurry to declare that there is “no such word”: “coronate” means “crown-shaped,” and has various uses in biology.