Tag Archives: Speaker of the House

Reaching Deeper Into the Bottom of the GOP Barrel

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The latest nominee for Speaker of the (barely) Republican-controlled House of Representatives is James Michael (Mike) Johnson, “representing” the 4th District of Louisiana. His official website touts the “7 Core Principles of Conservatism,” the customary blather about the “rule of law,” “free markets,” “limited government,” etc.

Last on the list is “Human Dignity:”

Because all men are created equal and in the image of God, every human life has inestimable dignity and value, and every person should be measured only by the content of their character. A just government protects life, honors marriage and family as the primary institutions of a healthy society, and embraces the vital cultural influences of religion and morality. Public policy should always encourage education and emphasize the virtue of hard work as a pathway out of poverty, while public assistance programs should be reserved only for those who are truly in need. In American, everyone who plays by the rules should get a fair shot. By preserving these ideals, we will maintain the goodness of America that has been the secret to our greatness.

Let’s unpack some of that.

For starters, note that Johnson conveniently picks up the “all men are created equal” from the Declaration of Independence but then, in a classic Republican head-fake, translates “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” into “in the image of God.” You will see below why this slight-of-hand is central to who Johnson is.

Here’s what Mike Johnson really stands for:

  • Opposed to abortion access.
  • Opposed to medical marijuana.
  • Opposed to same-sex marriage.
  • Falsely claimed Trump had fully cooperated with the Mueller investigation.
  • Opposed to certification of the 2020 election.
  • Voted to overturn 2020 election result in Pennsylvania.
  • Voted against establishing the national commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
  • Supported Trump’s 2017 Muslim ban.
  • Supports ending military aid to Ukraine so it can be absorbed by Russia.

[Wikipedia: https://tinyurl.com/3m38bmsx]

So much for the “rule of law” and the “inalienable right” to the “pursuit of happiness.”

Johnson is a religious zealot who appears to lack a basic understanding of the principle of separation of church and state while claiming devotion to the rule of law and the Constitution.

This is the man the GOP now has focused its attention on to elect as Speaker of the House, next in line behind the Vice President to succeed to the powers of the presidency.

 

House Speaker Election– Everything You Need to Know About GOP

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There are reportedly nine candidates now that madman Jim Jordan has been defeated for the third time. Whatever their actual or presumed credentials are for the job, the single telling distinction between them is absolutely clear:

Only two putative GOP Speakers voted to certify the election of Joe Biden

They are:

Tom Emmer (Minn.)

               Austin Scott (Ga.)

The other seven – well, they are pretty much Trumpers.

Interestingly though, all nine voted for Jim Jordan on all three of his failed attempts to get the Speaker spot. https://tinyurl.com/yf255a4n And,

Emmer … offered his support for a lawsuit that would have even more broadly upended the election results. Scott was included on The Washington Post’s list of election deniers running in 2022.

Finally, not to belabor this, do not forget that the Speaker of the House is much more than the default manager of the House-in-Session. The Speaker is next in line to occupy the office of the President following the Vice President.

Thus, if the Republican clowns in the House had elected Jim Jordan as Speaker, he could have succeeded to the presidency if both the then president and vice president died or were incapacitated. Jordan, who has been elected in Ohio’s 4th Congressional District nine times, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jordan, brought to Congress credentials as a wrestling coach. As reported in Wikipedia,

Jordan is a close ally of former president Donald Trump. During Trump’s presidency, Jordan sought to discredit investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and staged a sit-in to prevent a Trump impeachment inquiry hearing over the Trump–Zelenskyy telephone controversy. After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and Trump tried to overturn the election, Jordan supported lawsuits to challenge the election results and voted not to certify the Electoral College results. He refused to cooperate with the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, which subpoenaed him on May 12, 2022….

 Jordan earned a master’s degree in education from Ohio State University and received a Juris Doctor degree from the Capital University Law School in 2001. In a 2018 interview, Jordan said he never took the bar examination.

Note 1: Jordan’s law school entering class in 2022 had a median LSAT score of 151. The range of LSAT scores is 120 to 180. Jordan’s LSAT score has apparently not been reported.

Note 2: Researchers at the Center for Effective Lawmaking – a joint project between academics at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University – rated Jordan as the 202nd most effective Republican in the House of Representatives out of 205 it examined. https://tinyurl.com/3vuf4e26

No wrestlers have accused Jordan himself of sexual misconduct, but four former wrestlers named him as a defendant in a lawsuit against the university. Jordan has denied any wrongdoing, has refused to cooperate with investigations into Strauss and has described his accusers as “pawns in a political plot.”

 As of 2023, Jordan, who has served in the House of Representatives for over 16 years, has never sponsored a bill that later became law.

Jordan is now, apparently, out of the Speaker picture. I laid out some salient facts about him to add gravitas to the situation facing the country as the GOP continues its long journey to find a replacement for the disgraced Kevin McCarthy.

There appears to be a better than 50-50 chance that the Republicans will elect a Speaker who supports the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, that Donald Trump is innocent of the astonishing list of felonious crimes with which he has been charged in four jurisdictions and for which the known evidence of guilt is overwhelming. That person then stands just below the Vice President as a successor to the vast powers of the presidency of the United States.

That is where we are because that is where the Republican Party has brought us.