Now that Mike Johnson has been Speaker of the House for nearly 6 months, it might be a good idea to take a look at how he is doing for liberty.  In Johnson’s case, perhaps it is more accurate to say that we should take a look at how he is doing against liberty.

I wrote a post on October 27, 2023 titled “Will A New House Speaker Make a Difference?”  It’s hard to say for sure at this point if it has made any significant difference, but so far the answer seems to be “no”.

Mike Johnson is a total neocon.  He pretends to be a Christian and uses his religion to promote more war and U.S. government intervention overseas.  He is now fully in support of funding Ukraine (i.e., more war and death in Ukraine).  He is, of course, fully on board supporting the funding of Israel and its mass bombing campaign against the people in Gaza.

Just like Nikki Haley, who claims to be a fiscal conservative, Johnson is not a fiscal conservative.  How can you be when you want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on war?  Is there ever an ending to funding overseas adventures for these people?  The question answers itself.

Johnson can pretend he’s a fiscal conservative like Haley, but it means nothing.  It is just a lie.  The deficit is completely out of control, but Johnson keeps supporting the massive spending coming out of Congress.

Johnson has now helped pass an extension to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  This allows the government to spy on people, including Americans, without a warrant.  At this point, you could say that Johnson is bad on every single important issue.

Dump Johnson

Rand Paul recently said that he’s not sure if there’s a difference between Mike Johnson being in charge and Democrats being in charge.  I’m not so sure at this point either.

Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a warning to Johnson about the possibility of removing him as Speaker, just as they did to Kevin McCarthy.  So far, Johnson has seemed to ignore any warnings and continues on his statist ways.

Johnson has more leverage at this point than McCarthy did.  Are the Republicans really going to toss out Johnson now for another statist?  They also risk losing the Republican majority.

The Republicans in Congress are mostly either stupid or evil.  Some of them are both.  They expelled someone in their own party because he lied, yet Santos was probably more honest in a sense than most people in Congress.  Why would they stupidly get rid of someone who voted with them?  Perhaps it actually benefits someone like Johnson who can use it as leverage to keep in power since the Republican majority is so thin now.

When Thomas Massie opposed removing Kevin McCarthy as speaker, I couldn’t quite figure out why he had that position.  I could understand his position from a strategic reason, but I still thought it was better to toss out a statist even if he is replaced by another statist.

I have to admit at this point that Massie was probably correct, strategically speaking.  McCarthy is terrible, but I don’t think he would have been any worse the last 6 months as Johnson has been.

It will be interesting if Matt Gaetz and company try to get rid of Johnson.  I have a feeling Gaetz is ready to give up.  He took a lot of heat for standing up against McCarthy, and now we have another tyrant in the position.  I’m sure there are days he just shakes his head in disbelief.  It’s not that Gaetz is a libertarian, but he is certainly more pro liberty than most of the people in Congress.

It is interesting that, as Marjorie Taylor Greene threatens to vacate Johnson from his position, Donald Trump is defending Johnson.  This is not a good sign from Trump.  This is where he was at his worst in his 4 years as president.  He supports people who are authoritarians.  When Johnson one day stabs Trump in the back, he’ll get angry and act surprised.  It kind of shows how naïve Trump can be at times.

It is easy to say that Trump is just a statist himself, so of course he supports Johnson.  But then why do most of these statists oppose Trump?  Some of them pretend to be on Trump’s side until it is convenient to not be.  This is a bad sign for Trump that he learned nothing.  His running mate will probably also be a statist who will eventually turn on Trump.

Conclusion

Mike Johnson has been a total disaster.  I knew he was bad news from the beginning, but even I underestimated just how bad he would be.  I thought he would at least throw a few bones to the more pro freedom wing of the Republican Party.  Instead, he has thrown a lot more bones to the Democrats and the establishment in general.

2024 is already going to be one for the record books just because of the presidential election and the deep state’s attempt to stop Trump.  Now there is congressional politics in there too.  It seems unlikely that Johnson will hold onto his position for long.  The Republicans may lose the majority anyway because they believe in self sabotage.