Last week, the House GOP elected a new Speaker in Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.). It didn't take long for the left to pounce on Johnson, calling him all sorts of names that indicate one thing: he's a true conservative and thus a threat to left-wing hegemony.
And left-wing columnists aren't letting up. We're continuing to see a barrage of smears against the new speaker simply because he's — GASP — a Christian conservative.
"This guy is a religious nut. And by that, I mean he subscribes to all the extreme Christian nationalist views, which is number one, there should be no abortion nationwide," Albert Mohler quotes Jennifer Rubin as saying. "Ban number two, he's continually, I don't want to say discriminated against, but certainly supported measures that have an adverse effect on LGBTQ Americans."
When you've lost Jennifer Rubin — I guess that means you're a mainstream conservative. But Rubin isn't the only one going after Johnson. The New York Times had a pair of columns last week that sounded the alarm about how Johnson is a threat to the left.
Let's start with Paul Krugman. In a column he wrote on Thursday, Krugman lamented that "There are no moderate Republicans in the House of Representatives" before letting his readers know that "Johnson is more extreme than most people, I think even political reporters, fully realize."
To hear Krugman tell the tale, not only will the GOP under Johnson "reject democracy" and throw gay people into gulags, but millions of people will lose their government healthcare! A Johnson-led House just might undo Obamacare — finally! Krugman concluded that Republicans have "gone full-on extremist, on economic as well as social issues." The level of hand-wringing is astonishing.
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And then there's Jamelle Bouie. In his Friday column, Bouie blasts Johnson as a "backbencher with little leadership experience" who is "too obscure to have enemies," but that doesn't stop Johnson from becoming a threat. After all, Johnson is a product of "the far-right, anti-institutionalist wing of the congressional Republican Party."
Bouie is breathless in his condemnation of Mr. Obscure Backbencher:
He is staunchly against the bodily autonomy of women and transgender people and supports a nationwide ban on abortion and gender-affirming care for trans youth. He is also virulently anti-gay. In a 2003 essay, Johnson defended laws that criminalized homosexual activity between consenting adults. In 2004, he warned that same-sex marriage was a “dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.” Last year, Johnson introduced legislation that has been compared to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, and he continues to push to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.
Oh yeah, Bouie also wants you to know that Johnson doesn't believe that the 2020 presidential election wasn't totally on the up-and-up, which makes him "an election-denying extremist who believes that his allies have the right to nullify election results so that they can impose their vision of government and society on an unwilling public."
In short, Bouie, Krugman, and Rubin see Johnson as an extremist who must be stopped. But most of Johnson's views are in line with the vast majority of conservatives. So who else is an extremist in their eyes? That's right — you are. And just like these people want to stop Johnson, they want to stop you, too.
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