Early Wednesday evening, after three weeks of infighting, mainstream and hard-right Republicans united to elect the deeply conservative Representative Mike Johnson, a homophobic bigot and leading 2020 election denier, as Speaker of the House.
Johnson was a little-known evangelical social conservative from Louisiana. The far-right united around him and he also was supported by mainstream Republicans, getting all the 220 GOP votes.
He was immediately congratulated by the calculating far-right convert Elise Stefanik, and by Donald Trump, who said he would be a “great” speaker.
Bipartisanship
Scandalously, but not surprisingly, President Biden also congratulated him on the victory. “Even though we have real disagreements about important issues,” added Biden, “there should be mutual effort to find common ground wherever we can.” Biden is currently concerned with passing increased military aid for Israel and Ukraine.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who earlier called Johnson an “extreme right-wing ideologue,” pledged after the speaker was chosen that House Democrats will find “common ground” to work with Republicans whenever possible for the “good of the country.”
Although the conservative Democratic majority leader Chuck Shumer once laughably tried to cast himself as part of the “resistance” to Trump, he too emphasized “bipartisanship” and working together with Johnson. “I look forward to meeting with Speaker Johnson soon to discuss the path forward to avoid a government shutdown,” he stated, without a word about opposing his worst aims.
Yet Johnson is an evangelical religious conservative opposed to abortion rights, homosexuality and gay marriage.
Johnson has been a staunch supporter of Trump, during and after his presidency. After the 2020 election he helped launch a rejected lawsuit against key battleground states won by Biden, which tried to have the state legislatures overturn the results. Then, when 139 Republicans voted to dispute the Electoral College count against Trump in January 2021, as The New York Times reported, “about three-quarters relied on the arguments of a low-profile Louisiana congressman, Representative Mike Johnson, the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”
Homophobic
Prior to being elected to Congress in 2016, Johnson worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right Christian outfit that claims a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society. They have defended countries who practice state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people, and want to recriminalize sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults in the US. The Southern Poverty Law Center categorized them as an anti-LGBT hate group.
Mike Johnson was central is pushing these claims, writing that homosexuality was an “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous lifestyle,” and that tolerating that “bizarre” choice could lead to legalized pedophilia. As a Representative, Johnson introduced a federal Don’t Say LGBTQ+ bill, and co-sponsored a gender-affirming care ban.
The roots of Johnson’s politics may be best displayed in his podcast, where he and his wife claim to give a “biblical perspective” on current affairs: vehemently opposing abortion rights; calling for school prayer; fear-mongering over a “socialist” Democratic agenda; and railing against the current prosecutions of Trump. In one episode he warned Americans are living in “a brave new world” with “open, brazen depravity with levels that we’ve never seen and real threats, really, to everything that the Bible says is true and right and good.”
In his acceptance speech he mentioned “scripture and the Bible,” as the proper alternative to “Marxism and Communism.”
On the day of his nomination, Johnson announced his most immediate priorities were supporting Israel against what he called “the barbarism of Hamas,” and stopping immigration across what he termed the “broken border” between Mexico and the US. He has already introduced legislation to limit asylum by making it harder for asylum seekers to claim fear of persecution their home countries.
Class Warfare
Many in the GOP who voted against ultra-MAGA Jim Jordan will also think that Mike Johnson leans too far towards right-wing hate. They don’t think this for reasons of principle, but because it might cost them swing votes. They are cheering Johnson now, and keeping reservations to themselves, perhaps because he is lesser known and more soft-spoken in his extreme bigotry.
The primary reason however, is that they are in full agreement when it comes to the class warfare issues of opposing unions and cutting the social budget. Johnson is in favor of slashing Medicaid and the SNAP (“food stamps”) benefit he called “our nation’s most broken and bloated welfare program.” More than 40 million people rely on SNAP to feed their families. Democrats, who are just as wedded to the status quo as Republicans, are certainly not willing to put up a fight, already bowing over in promises of bipartisanship.
As a conservative on labor issues, Johnson has voted against union-backed legislation, and especially attacked teachers’ unions. While Congress and the ruling class still find unity over these basic class issues, the nomination of Johnson is a further sign that the “wreckers” are gaining influence over the “fixers” in the GOP, despite some commentary naively speculating that the rejection of a bullying Jordan could have been a turning point against Trumpism.
Crisis
Immediately after the nomination, the despicable and ultra-right wing Florida Representative Matt Gaetz went to Steve Bannon’s DC lair to tell his podcast listeners “If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.”
The raucous spectacle of choosing a new GOP speaker started with Matt Gaetz entering a “motion to vacate,” and with seven like-minded Republicans ousting Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy in an unprecedented move at the start of this month. The die had been cast in January when the fractured GOP failed to approve McCarthy in the first ballots, and Gaetz vowed he was “prepared for an extended battle.” McCarthy was also a pro-Trump, anti-abortion, anti-migrant bigot, but after engaging in the normal dealing with Democrats to avoid a partial government shutdown, and in seeking extra money for the war in Ukraine, he was not right-wing enough for some Republicans.
In a process that has grown considerably since the free-market “Tea Party” Republicans, the GOP Freedom Caucus actually wants the US to default on its debt as a means of shrinking the state. As analyzed by Alex Calinicos, “the party’s traditional moorings in the mainstream of US big business are fraying badly.”
This may strengthen the Democrats’ traditionally second-string role as a party of stability, big business, and US empire. But certain sections of the ruling class are gambling with supporting the fake populists of a dangerously radical right-wing shift.
Johnson, like Jordan, voted against more arms to Ukraine. As speaker he may disrupt the bipartisan agreement on strengthening Cold War imperialism in this area, partly because of sympathies for Putin’s right-wing (and anti-gay) authoritarianism. As a quiet rank-and-file member of the House Armed Services Committee, Johnson seemed more concerned with adding conservative culture war proposals to the National Defense Authorization Act than to military strategy or the standing of the US empire.
The chaos is a symptom of the deeper crisis facing US political institutions. It is little wonder over half the country said (according to one poll) that US democracy was working “not too well” or “not at all.”
An increasingly rabid and unhinged Donald Trump, facing numerous investigations and indictments, is still by far the front runner for the GOP nomination. And Biden, uninspiring even to the minority who approve of him in polls, continues to lean towards the Republicans in search of a ruling class compromise, only to find the goalposts shifted again and the right attacking him as a socialist. Trump is now leading Biden in a number of recent polls about the 2024 election, primarily because Democrats have failed to deliver any gains for ordinary people.
Role of the Left
It is not the job of the left to try to restore trust in democratic institutions, the cry of disappointed liberals. We need to defend what democratic spaces we have against an electoral far-right moving in the direction of a fascist ideology. [Of course, whenever actual fascists raise their heads in public we need to mobilize against them.] This cannot be done by defending a status quo. We counter the broader right by standing with the oppressed and fighting unreservedly against each bigoted move. By raising the common interests of the working class. By pointing to the roots of real problems in the workings of capitalism, and fighting for an alternative to that rotting system. Of course, this is all easier said in slogans than effectively implemented in practice. But it is still true.
Congress was never a promising terrain for class struggle or the fight against oppressions. Now, a small group of the rabid far-right have dragged the range of politics debated there even farther to the right. It is the growing demonstrations in support of the Palestinians, and the bigger union struggles we’re seeing today, that hint at the direction we must go to reverse this, not in the dung-heap of Congressional politics.
— Eric Fretz, 10/26/23
Marx21 US 