nobody likes mike

Mike Johnson is so doomed, even his most extreme & abhorrent rhetoric can’t save him with the GOP

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Mike Johnson appearing between two American flags.

Who says there’s no more bipartisanship in Washington? As we head into the spring months, Democrats and far-right Republicans are rallying around a common cause: Ripping Mike Johnson!

Nobody is pleased with the House Speaker, who enrages Democrats with his extreme anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and Republicans for keeping the government open. Last week, Johnson supported six government spending bills, once again relying on Democrats to push the legislation through.

This nominal act of competence outraged the House Freedom Caucus, which issued a blistering statement against the funding packages. That inspired Marjorie Taylor Greene to introduce a motion to oust Johnson from his post.

Though Johnson said he’s ignoring the resolution, MTG is ratcheting up her campaign. She blasted the ultraconservative Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s podcast, calling him a pawn for Democrats and the so-called “Deep State.”

“Everywhere I go in my district, everyone is so angry at Mike Johnson. One guy said it to me like this. He goes, ‘Do they have Mike Johnson’s wife tied up somewhere with a gun to her head? What is up with Mike Johnson?'” she said.

MTG, never one for subtly, presented her theory.

“I think he’s been promoted to be the senior partner at the firm, and you know what that means. He is not working for Republicans, he is not helping Republicans. He’s not even listening to Republicans,” she said. “He’s doing the very dirty work of the Deep State, and it happened fast!”

Left to lead a rancorous party with a razor thin majority, Johnson is handcuffed. He’s still trying to pass a bill that would send additional aid to Ukraine, another unpopular move in the GOP.

With no legislative track record, Johnson is relying on his hateful words to appease his antigay caucus. His most recent salvo came Easter Sunday, when he called it “obnoxious and abhorrent” for Joe Biden to recognize Transgender Day of Visibility.

Biden, for his part, called Johnson “thoroughly uninformed.” Democrat Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock went further, criticizing Johnson for using Easter as a jumping off point to platform his transphobic views.

Warnock is a senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, while Johnson cozies up to gay-hating and slave-loving Christian nationalists.

Related:

Mike Johnson caused so much secondhand embarrassment at the State of the Union

The House Speaker looked pained while sitting behind President Joe Biden.

“Apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent, and I think he ought to think about that,” Warnock said on CNN.

He proceeded to say Johnson’s trans-hating barbs are in opposition with the true tenants of Christianity.

“This is just one more instance of folks who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith,” offered Warnock.

“Jesus centered the marginalized. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down but as a bridge to bring all of us together.”

In a desperate attempt to codify the right, Johnson is pulling out all the stops. He’s even taken to defending the January 6 rioters, saying there were “just there and happened to walk through the building.”

But that’s not enough for the MAGA faithful. They want Johnson to release security footage from that fateful day, which he promised to do months ago.

As an explanation for his delay, Johnson said this week his team was trying to “blur faces” to “protect the innocent.”

Hmmm…it’s almost like the January 6 footage is actually damning for the insurrectionists, rather than vindicating.

Johnson is the most conservative House Speaker in recent history, with a long track record of homophobic views to match. As a congressman, he championed a national version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, and said the “Democrat Party and their cultural allies are on a misguided crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology.”

Back in the mid-2000s, Johnson argued that gay marriage “is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”

Even as Speaker, he’s resorted to bashing LGBTQ+ folx, including children. He sent out a fundraising email last year denouncing out high school students.

Unsurprisingly, Johnson’s atavistic views extend to women and reproductive freedom. The religious zealot is opposed to abortion in every scenario, likening the procedure to an “American Holocaust.”

Johnson is also in a convenant marriage, meaning he and his wife can only get divorced on a small set of grounds, such as adultery, if one partner commits a felony or faces imprisonment, or physical or sexual abuse.

The vast majority of Americans, of course, can get divorced from their partner whenever they want. Johnson says that kind of personal freedom results in… school shootings?

Yes, he went there.

“In the late ’60s, we invented things like no-fault divorce laws, the sexual revolution. We invented radical feminism. We invented legalized abortion in 1973, where the state, the government, sanctioned the killing of the unborn,” he said at a recent event. “We know that we’re living in a completely amoral society. People say, ‘How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?’ Because we taught a couple generations of Americans that there’s no right or wrong.”

That’s pretty crazy rhetoric, but apparently, not enough to win over MTG’s heart. At this point, even proclamations about Jewish space lasers would probably be futile.

As the most unpopular man in Washington, Johnson walks alone. What a pity indeed.

Related:

Donald Trump dared TV crews to show the size of his rally crowd… and then one of them did

It wasn’t as impressive as he would have people believe.

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