Republicans finally united behind a speaker, a congressman from Louisiana named Mike Johnson. He is an election denier and checks off all the extreme right wing boxes.
There does not seem to be anything substantive that distinguishes him from all the others who tried and failed so I suspect that it was due to sheer exhaustion and embarrassment that any would-be opponents decided to swallow their reservations and vote him in. If his name had come up earlier, he would likely have been rejected.
Let’s see how he manages to run things.
He is a christian fundamentalist also. He is already talking about God picking him for this job. If this means he admits God has picked Biden for a more important job it could be OK but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to work that way. His type are usually the “God has picked me as an example of virtue and picked you as a bad example.” type.
I think that might be the answer: there’s nothing that make him a “flaming liberal” in the eyes of any Republican; and there’s no Republican who can’t live with the all the looney stuff that’s not their particular issue.
JM:
I usually hear something more like “God picked me and the Devil picked [someone I don’t like].” There’s a war going on between the angels and the demons, don’tcha know.
I am wondering if they determined they need to pick someone they hope will fly under the radar while also checking off all those boxes and not draw much bad press, a reason they could not vote for Jim Jordan. Or at least someone without much name recognition that would have people asking, “Who?” as opposed to “That f%*&#?” That said, Johnson is quickly drawing bad press from what I’ve seen. Hard not to for a person who checks off all those boxes.
As I’ve said elsewhere, we need to closely watch all the major US churches to see whether they support or denounce this clown’s claim of “divine right” — a claim lots of good conservative Christians also made about Hitler when he came to power.
I think Leo@3 hits it; they wanted someone without a lot of name recognition who checked all of the “boxes of extremism”. The question that remains is whether or not the main media players will point out his extremism or downplay it (in a misguided effort to “avoid the appearance of partisanship). If you ask me, I think the people deserve to know that the new Speaker is an election-denier, fights against LGBTQ equality, denies the existence of human-caused climate change, wants a federal abortion ban, etc. It doesn’t really matter if The Guardian or MSNBC makes this known, what matters is what ABC, NBC, CBS, USA Today (and the hundreds of local papers they have infected), etc. make known. That’s the great gray middle. We know that the world of Fox et al, will sing his praises.
He lacks any experience.
He will not be able to impose order on the feces-flinging monkey faction.
Soon the government will shut down as no Republican dares compromise with the Democrats and the illusion of business-as-usual will shatter.
Beyond that point, chaos will rule.