It must have felt so good when Mike Johnson began his daily routine Thursday refreshing the home page of The New York Times and seeing his face at the very top accompanied by an article heralding him as “Speaker of the whole House” following Democrats’ rescue of his job.
If this isn’t what he lives for, I’m not sure what is. It’s certainly not to do anything remotely in the interest of Republican voters.
Since he was elected speaker six months ago, Johnson’s victories are limited to voting to fully fund Joe Biden’s back-breaking agenda, heaping 60 billion more taxpayer dollars into a corrupt slush fund (sometimes called “Ukraine”) and giving up any leverage Republicans had in forcing the administration to address the nation’s most urgent problem — the bleeding Southern border. Oh, plus he re-authorized warrantless spying on Americans.
To be fair, he can’t say he got nothing out of it. For fulfilling their complete wishlist, Democrats and the media did compare Johnson to Churchill. He also declared himself a “wartime speaker.”
Those prizes proved to be short-lived. After Biden announced this week that he would halt additional offensive military equipment if Israel advances ground troops in Rafah, Johnson ran to his other favorite publication, Politico, to say this wasn’t what he had hoped the president would do.
“I went straight to the White House and I said … ‘Somebody’s going to have to explain this to me, because it’s very different than what I was told,’” said Johnson.
