Speaker Mike Johnson Was a Disastrous Closing Argument That Cost the GOP Votes

In the Two-Weeks Leading Up to Elections, Mike Johnson’s Fanatical Face Filled Voter’s Television Screens

Six months ago, I wrote, “If Democrats want to win in 2024, they should adopt the slogan “Abort the GOP.” The Democrats were impatient, performing an early termination of the Republican Party in this week’s elections. If you wanted to witness a bigger wipeout, you’d have to travel to Hawaii’s Banzai Pipeline. It’s with sweet irony that abortion is the death knell of the “pro-life” Republican Party, punishing it for its extreme medieval positions on reproductive freedom.

Virginia’s GOP governor, Glenn Youngkin, is getting hammered for betting big on abortion. He barnstormed the state peddling his proposal to prohibit abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The result was he sabotaged his presidential prospects, the Senate stayed in Democratic hands and the state GOP lost its razor thin majority in the House of Delegates. Glenn’s folly was historic and of such magnitude he should consider changing his last name from Youngkin to Bumpkin.

Republicans were also humiliated in Ohio, with a pro-choice measure on the ballot passing 56.6%-43.4%. As center-right New York Times columnist David Brooks pointed out:

This year, Democrats and their supporters effectively played to median voters, with, for example, an ad in Ohio in which a father who grew up in the church castigated the G.O.P. for not allowing abortion exceptions for rape and the health of the mother, and one in Kentucky in which a woman who was raped by her stepfather noted that she would have had to carry the baby to term under the extreme Republican laws.

This was exciting news for Democrats, who had been depressed all week following a New York Times poll showing presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump beating President Joe Biden in virtually every swing state. I agree with David Brooks when he says:

Abortion was not always a great issue for Democrats. But it became one because of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the subsequent Republican legislation to severely restrict abortion.

Biden doesn’t have to become magically popular; he just has to remind the tens of millions of Americans who voted against MAGA multiple times before why they need to vote against MAGA again, just as Democrats did in 2020, 2022 and, to some degree, 2023.

Aside from abortion, trumpeting right wing “parents’ rights” and attacking transgender Americans had diminishing election returns. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie explains:

Republicans stepped back up to the plate and took another swing at transgender rights. Attorney General Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, the Republican nominee for governor of that state, and his allies spent millions on anti-transgender-rights ads in his race against the Democratic incumbent, Andy Beshear. In one television ad, a narrator warns viewers of a “radical transgender agenda” that’s “bombarding our children everywhere we turn.” Beshear won re-election.

One Youngkin-endorsed candidate for State Senate, Juan Pablo Segura, told Fox News that he wants to revisit a failed bill that would have required schools to notify parents if there was any hint a child was interested in transgender identity. Segura lost his race.

Some Ohio Republicans also tried to turn their fight against a reproductive rights initiative into a battle over transgender rights, falsely stating that the wording of a proposed state constitutional amendment would allow minors to obtain gender-affirming surgeries without parental consent. On Tuesday, Ohio voters backed the [pro-choice] initiative.

If the job of Democrats was to remind voters of GOP extremism, there was no greater reminder than the elevation of Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson to Speaker of the House, or as I call him, “Preacher of the House”. In the two-week run-up to the elections, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominated the news cycle. The only other major story to break through the Mideast madness, especially on cable television, was Speaker Johnson’s inane ramblings and insane beliefs.

The eye-opening stories included Johnson’s active support for conversion therapy, with his cameo in an “ex-gay” video while he was a legal eagle for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a hate group. There was the ultra-creepy story of how Johnson and his son use an app to monitor each other’s porn habits. Whatever happened to fathers and sons bonding over baseball games, instead of a debased game of checking in on each other’s balls?

Gross.  

During an interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Johnson commented on his personal outlook on life:

"I am a Bible-believing Christian," Johnson said. "Someone asked me today in the media, they said, 'It's curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?' I said, 'Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That's my worldview.'"

Predictably, Johnson’s religious fervor extended to abortion. He once wrote, “The prevailing judicial philosophy is no different than Hitler's.” In a 2005 Shreveport Times op-ed Johnson remarked:

"This disregard for life has been fostered by the courts. During business hours today, 4,500 innocent American children will be killed. It is a holocaust that has been repeated every day for 32 years, since 1973's Roe v. Wade."

Unfortunately for Johnson, Shreveport is not Las Vegas, and his fundamentalist Christian positions and kooky pronouncements won’t stay in Louisiana. The paper trail runs deep with this one, and the ongoing radical revelations are a gift to Democrats that will keep giving. Johnson can try to run away from his support for Donald Trump’s coup on democracy or his policy positions on abortion, but he can’t hide because he’s already said too much.

The Democrat’s could not have concocted a stronger closing argument, two-weeks prior to Election Day, than the existence of Speaker Mike Johnson. Any reasonable voter who thought of staying home could witness the present regime under Johnson to intuitively grasp an oppressive future under GOP rule. With the terrifying worldview of Johnson in full-view, voters decided to march to the polls to “Abort the GOP”.

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