'Failed to vet him': Why Mike Johnson is even 'worse speaker' choice than Jim Jordan

Following a three-week internal battle between House Republicans over who would be ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy's successor, the party elected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), after rejecting Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-IN).

In a Monday, October 30 MSNBC op-ed, columnist Michael A. Cohen argues that "while Republicans may have, for now, ended their very public and very embarrassing speaker fight, in selecting Johnson they have created for themselves a larger set of political problems."

He writes the GOP has "a very real chance of entering the 2024 campaign season essentially tied with Democrats," but "now their most vulnerable members, in districts won by [President Joe] Biden, face the added challenge of having to defend their votes in support of Johnson for speaker."

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Cohen notes, "Ironically, though vulnerable Republicans voted against Jordan because they worried about his track record, Johnson's vast paper trail of infelicitous statements and policy positions — and him being largely unknown — might make him a worse speaker for those Republicans."

Cohen argues, "If House Democrat challengers want to run on the message that their GOP opponents are a threat to democracy, they can point to their vote to make Johnson speaker. Every GOP House member who voted for Johnson effectively endorsed his efforts to disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters, or at the very least that's how Democratic candidates will portray it."

He highlights examples of Johnson's support for abortion bans, pointing to the fact the GOP leader "said of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, 'Many of us have been working towards this day our entire adult lives, and it is a joyous occasion.' He declared, 'There is no right to abortion in the Constitution; there never was,' and called abortion a 'holocaust.' One can imagine that women in competitive House districts will disagree."

The columnist writes:

Johnson has even blamed school shootings on abortion, as well as no-fault divorce and the teaching of evolution. Indeed, it seems Johnson has blamed everything for gun violence other than guns themselves. In the wake of last week's deadly mass shooting in Maine that left 18 people dead, Johnson said the real problem 'is the human heart. It's not guns.'

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Furthermore, in addition to calling homosexuality "sinful and destructive," Johnson also — according to The Washington Post's Greg Sargent — "promoted the racist 'great replacement' theory, which intimates that Democrats want to replace white voters with immigrants of color."

Cohen argues that the congressman "has taken positions that are both far outside the mainstream and that Democrats have already used to mobilize their voters," and "in selecting Johnson, Republicans made one small error — they failed to vet him."

Cohen's full op-ed is available at this link.