Imagine if Chauncey Gardiner were a malignant cancer.
The drunken game of musical chairs has ended, and creationist/election denier/bigot/Trump vassal Mike Johnson has won. It was a revealing game, because this should have been an opportunity to show off the very best of their party, the people who would represent the Republican vision of the future. Instead, we got a peek at what they think is great, and got serving of sewage sludge.
Steve Scalise, white supremacist and anti-Semite? Jim Jordan, notorious enabler of sexual assault? Tom Emmer, dullard and heir to Michele Bachmann’s electorate? They finally settle on a low-key (most people don’t know how awful he is yet) Trump stooge. This is their best? He won because he was a cipher!
Finally, on Tuesday night, House Republicans picked the name “Johnson” out of the phone book. He was acceptable because he was unknown on Capitol Hill, even to many Republicans. During Wednesday’s roll-call vote on the House floor, Kay Granger (R-Tex.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, rose and mistakenly voted for “Mike Rogers” — the chairman of the Armed Services committee — before correcting herself to Mike Johnson. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), in a statement congratulating the new speaker, called him Jim Johnson. Susan Collins of Maine, top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told CNN’s Lauren Fox Wednesday morning that she’d have to Google him.
Johnson’s anonymity was his greatest asset. In just his seventh year in Congress, he hadn’t been around long enough, or had enough power, to make enemies. He is the least-experienced speaker in a century and a half. But he has also been an avid election denier, Trump defender and promoter of the deep-state conspiracy, which appealed to the MAGA hard-liners who had defeated McCarthy, Scalise and Emmer.
The Republican party is fucking done, or the United States is done, a failed state. The next election has become even more important, because we have to purge these losers from the government.
Amurica, the nuclear-powered banana republic.
@1 Wrong fruit. We’re an orange republic. ; )
So this guy is Trump’s tiny, ugly Johnson.
“He won because he was a cipher!”
You reminded me of Robert De Niro’s character in the movie Angel Heart, Louis Cypher.
Why the Chauncey Gardiner reference?
Chauncey Gardiner? I’m thinking more Spiro Agnew.
When Nixon was choosing his running mate in 1968, polls were telling him that anyone he chose with any kind of national profile would actually drag his numbers down. So he chose Agnew, the little-known governor of Maryland, and went on to win the general election.
Agnew, of course, turned out to be a walking, steaming pile of corruption, having taken bribes and kickbacks his entire career. He resigned in disgrace in 1973.
There was no Google then.
Purge the losers from the government?
That would require educating the uneducable and then getting them to vote for a candidate who would make their lives better. Being informed and improving one’s well-being? Neither of those things are wanted by certain percentage of the population, it is just too much work.
We can hope the shit-show these Republicans have perpetuated on the country will convince enough people to vote against them and return control of all three branches to the only party who is serious about governing.
PZ said: ‘The Republican party is fucking done, or the United States is done, a failed state.’
I reply: I’ve always agreed with that and stated that in many comments in many past posts. Democracy is a fanatical money owned popularity contest. The level of corruption in government here at all levels is insane. The level of unhinged zealotry and disconnect from rational thinking throughout this country makes it seem as if those decent, rational people will be destroyed by these thugs. Keep your head down, do what you can to be decent, rational, caring and honest and support those people and causes that are aligned with those values. I don’t know what else we can do to prevent the complete deterioration of this nation.
When the thugs are both corrupt and incompetent it is good news.
Yes, under the new speaker they will go about wreaking great havoc.
But they will also get in each other’s way. And as Gaetz and the other attention-seeking weirdos do their thing, they will spend an increasing part of their energy flinging feces at each other.
Under Trump, the stupidity was concentrated in the White House. In the House it is spread evenly and they have no Mitch McConnell to rein them in.
I anticipate the next year will see the Republicans becoming more like the Brit tories- the camouflage of caring about the common good and of having the better governing skills will wear out altogether.
The hardcore MAGA voters will not care but they are a shrinking minority. Gerrymandering can compensate up to a point but not forever.
The new guy blames mass shootings on women being able to get a divorce and the teaching of evolution.
Saw this about him in the Guardian:
“Mike Johnson, the newly elected Republican speaker of the US House, won taxpayer funding for a Noah’s Ark amusement park while working as a lawyer, in a graphic illustration of his uncompromising rightwing Christian beliefs.
Working for Freedom Guard, a non-profit proclaiming a commitment to defending religious liberty, Johnson was hired by Answers in Genesis, a creationist ministry, in 2015, after the state of Kentucky rescinded an offer of tourism tax incentives for the project in Williamstown, citing discrimination against non-Christians.”
Is this the guy who gets to certify the 2024 election in Congress btw?
birgerjohansson @ 10, it isn’t “the new guy”, it’s “the FNG” – fucking new guy. Everything’s the FNG’s fault, always.
rorschach @ 11, not quite. The squeaker of the mouse doesn’t get to certify or deny certification of the vote alone, it’s for the entire House and Senate to do that. He can only attempt to obstruct and possibly trigger a constitutional crisis.
Give the lack of appetite for that after the god-emperor lost, I doubt they’ll suddenly yearn for such a crisis and rightful charge of willful dereliction of duty.