Can we please fire Ron Johnson now?


We’ve got a nest of traitors in the Senate, yet to my disappointment there has been no effort to eject these clowns. Maybe we’re getting close to smacking Ron Johnson down, though. That would be a start.

Johnson is the senator from our state next door, and he’s an idiot. If there were a competition for the dumbest guy in the Senate, it would be a struggle between Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, and Steve King, and Johnson would be a contender. King is in Iowa, our neighbor to the South, so I think we’re being surrounded. He’s a gun nut, he opposes acting against climate change (carbon dioxide is “good for the trees”, he says), he opposed the Affordable Care Act, he believes in that “Great Replacement” nonsense (yeah, he’s racist), he doesn’t like vaccines and pushed hydroxychloroquine, and he’s a devoted follower of Donald Trump. All that wasn’t enough to get him kicked out — it’s stuff that appealed to his dumbass electorate — but now his prominent role in the insurrection might get him in trouble.

Weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) held a hearing on election fraud in an attempt to legitimize former president Donald Trump’s false allegations of voting irregularities. Four days before the attack on the Capitol, Johnson signed a statement with nine other Republican senators that they intended to object to certifying Joe Biden’s electors and demand “an emergency 10-day audit of the election.”

This week, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot revealed that Johnson’s chief of staff tried to deliver to Vice President Mike Pence a slate of fake electors backing Trump, raising questions about the Wisconsin Republican’s role in a deliberate and coordinated plan to block Biden’s win and give Trump the presidency.

The disclosure also underscores the extent of Johnson’s role as one of Congress’s most prominent election deniers and Jan. 6 apologists — spreading conspiracy theories about rigged votes and playing down the severity of the violent assault on the Capitol as mostly “peaceful,” while floating the idea that it might have been an inside job by the FBI.

Now it’s revealed that he was part of a plan to deliver an alternate slate of electors for Wisconsin and Michigan to Mike Pence. These were not valid electors, they were just a mob of self-appointed MAGA twits with no legitimate standing, but the goal was to sow sufficient confusion in the ballots that Pence would throw up his hands and toss the election into…the Supreme Court. That corrupt, untrustworthy gang of barely qualified theocratic hacks, who would then rule that Donald Trump was president.

It’s becoming obvious that Johnson was cheerfully poised, about to throw a spanner in the works of our clumsy election apparatus, and that there’s good evidence that he was prepared to do so. Maybe he’ll finally get drummed out of office, which is the least of what I want to see done. Maybe the chickenshits of the Senate will decide to drag their heels and hope that he loses his election in the fall. Maybe nothing will be done, ever, about him and all the other traitor Republicans in Washington DC.

I think I might be a little bit disillusioned about the people in power. Axing one bozo might restore a tiny shred of confidence.

Comments

  1. Akira MacKenzie says

    Does Ron Johnson oppose abortion and support guns? Yes? Then no, the backwards denizens of Wisconsin WON’T fire him!

  2. birgerjohansson says

    Naah, If anything Johnson is too intellectual to fit today’s MAGA- verse. They need more down-to-earth characters, you know, like Alex Jones.

  3. larpar says

    King never in the Senate, no longer in the House.
    Grassley and Ernst can both go.

  4. raven says

    Yahoo News January 04, 2022:

    During a familiar rant Monday on a conservative radio show about the merits of relying on the body’s “natural immunity” to COVID-19 after being infected with the virus, the senator asked, “Why do we assume that the body’s natural immune system isn’t the marvel that it is?”

    “Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease?” he added.
    and
    Washington Post May 3, 2022
    Johnson has done so before. Last October, he went on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show and alleged that more than 16,000 people had died after vaccination — a claim that assumes both that the VAERS reports are accurate (since anyone can submit a VAERS report) and that the vaccine actually led to the death.
    and
    It’s an odd reelection strategy, to be sure. In a recent poll, more Wisconsinites viewed Johnson unfavorably than favorably, a pattern that’s held consistent since last summer.

    Johnson has been a vocal antivaxxer for the entire time of the Covid-19 virus pandemic.

    “Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease?” he added.
    Because we can create “something better than god in terms of combating disease”. That is an obvious fact.
    A century ago, the average life span in the USA was 48 years. It is now 78.
    We’ve gained 30 extra years of life. This is due to modern science and medicine, notably vaccines and antibiotics.
    God’s plan for us was to have short unhappy lives and die young.
    We’ve decided not to follow that plan.

    FWIW, around 300,000 US people who died from Covid-19 virus would still be alive if they were vaccinated. They have also prevented around 2 million additional deaths in the USA from the virus.

  5. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 4

    “Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease?” he added.

    Well Ronnie, a mere virus was able to defeat the immune system created by your perfect, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent Gawd, so why not give humans a shot?

  6. SchreiberBike says

    Don’t give up on Wisconsin. Our other senator, Tammy Baldwin, is a gay Democrat. I don’t like adding more money to politics, but I’ve been supporting Mandela Barnes. Wisconsin can be rid of these people.

  7. mordred says

    @4

    “Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease?”

    About 500 million dead from smallpox in the last hundred years before a human creation eradicated the desease?

  8. Paul K says

    I was going to post pretty much what SchreiberBike said at #6. Wisconsin is not nearly as red as the Gerrymandering done by the legislature makes it look. That has no bearing on statewide elections. Johnson originally got elected in 2010, during the big anti-Obama/Obamacare surge. Then he got re-elected in 2016, with the insane Trumpish rise, running against the same person he had beaten six years before. I’m hoping that, because he is so obviously terrible, this time around he can be beaten. We elected a Democratic governor two years ago, and Tammy Baldwin has won re-election. It can still be done.

  9. imback says

    As @larpar#3 said, Steve King was never in the Senate and is no longer in the House either. Though Iowa’s Senate contingent is indeed no great shakes, it remains down to a contest between Ron Johnson and Tommy Tuberville for dumbest Senator. I suggest they mudwrestle for the title.

  10. tomh says

    A lot of competition for dumbest senator, but soon Herschel Walker will be there to retire the trophy for all time.

  11. Ed Seedhouse says

    “Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease?”

    Why do we think that we can create something (automobiles) better than God in terms of travel? Or something better than swimming to cross the ocean?

  12. Pierce R. Butler says

    If there were a competition for the dumbest guy in the Senate…

    Johnson would be out in front with Tuberville on his heels, but Rubio and Paul would steadily close the gap with Blackburn adding to the drama with irregular spurts of energy.

    Fans in the stands would get their thrills, but still reminisce about the glory dotage-days of Strom Thurmond and John Stennis.

  13. says

    Yes, fire him.
    If for no other reason than the bit of doggerel that sticks in my head every time I read or hear his name. The original, which I read in one of Kurt Vonnegut’s books, used the name Yon Yonson, but it’s an easy substitution:
    My name is Ron Johnson
    I live in Wisconsin
    I work in a lumber mill there
    The people I meet
    When I walk down the street
    Say, what is your name?
    And I say:
    My name is Ron Johnson
    I live in Wisconsin…
    And so on, ad infinitum.
    I have problems with earworms, too.

  14. StevoR says

    I guess other folks have already seen Colbert’s latest segment featuring Ron Johnson here & I guess its getting predictable that I’ll link for y’all here but still..

  15. unclefrogy says

    when I was a youngster just learning about the world I was shocked and angry that there were so many stupid willfully ignorant people in positions of power and influence in our country. I am no longer young and have become more aware of the world as a whole and discovered that this kind of willful ignorance and naked egotism are not confined to the U.S. and may in fact be a universal trait.
    I do hope that some of the worst offenders like the guy in question here get placed by someone more open to the facts of the real world and has the ability to think some what clearly.
    I no longer imagine an enlightened human civilization boldly venturing forth to explore the galaxy. My hope is more modest that we at least do not destroy ourselves by obstinate stupidity and ignorance, though some times it is a faint hope.

  16. woodsong says

    feralboy12 @13,

    I remember hearing that! Back when I was a teenager in the ’80s, several of my schoolmates wrote alternate lyrics. The one that sticks in my mind:

    My name is Yanni Yannson
    I come from Wisconsin
    I work in a lumber mill there
    The chipmunks I see
    As I walk out to pee
    They say “Hello! Got something to eat?”
    And I say “Sorry! Not now!”
    And then I go water a tree.

    (Does not continue ad infinitum.)

  17. wsierichs says

    Some time back, I realized Rand Paul is the biggest idiot in Congress. I don’t remember the many things he’s said that earned him that award, but among the many many big blowhards in Congress (most but not all Republicans, i.e., Manchin) Rand Paul stands out head and shoulders as the biggest.

  18. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 16

    As do I. He’s a senator, so we can’t go blaming gerrymandering for his wins either. Once again, shit Americans from rural and suburban crap holes are more likely to show up and vote than urban leftists.

  19. Rich Woods says

    while floating the idea that it might have been an inside job by the FBI.

    Hang on, I thought it was Antifa who were masquerading as the cryptofascist MAGA militia seditionists! Or are they now saying that the FBI infiltrated Antifa and triggered the coup attempt? So who ordered the FBI to do that? Was it an inside job all along, with the Trump DoJ behind it? Where do the Illuminati fit in? The reptiloids? And can I get a fresh mug of coffee, double-quick, before my brain cell tires itself out?

  20. Akira MacKenzie says

    FBI, Antifa, BLM, the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, the Interdimensional Jew Lizard men, Satan…

    Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

  21. says

    Re: the new misdirection.

    I may have seen a pivot from antifascists to Russians with a “bear suit” reference, but given the context that may have been referring to Colbert’s antibear stuff and the person chose not to answer my question.

  22. wzrd1 says

    The prevailing idiocy I’ve been seeing is that the mob was really FBI informants, blather, blather, apparently, not understanding that informants are clandestine and not running around on national TV for everyone to recognize.

    @Akira, I thought those were Jewish space laser pointers for the space whiteboard…

    Another winner, video of Pence receiving a text informing him of a letter from Congress in support of invoking the 25th. His face as he read it suggested it being a toss up of that, drinking burning gasoline and doing his duty, the duty winning out, as he didn’t want to go to prison for Trump.

    Another winner, new strain has natural and vaccine provoked antibodies 30% less effective for two new strains of COVID. There’s a polio outbreak in the UK as well.
    At least COVID gave us a chance to practice sewage testing for virus, helping to narrow down hotspots. Polio is mostly oral-fecal, so that should give good indications of hotspots in sewage as well.

    Oh, another howler that’s popping up, the election was never audited or votes recounted. The doublethink is phenomenal in these creatures! Troll bots are back on Twitter in force as well.
    I thought the great god of Elonism was supposed to whammy those away after he bought into Twitter (which is looking like the deal is going to fall through, as he’s not getting the control that he wanted).