Louisiana Voice

U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson continues to be an embarrassment to Louisiana.

Our extinguished Speaker of the House, that guy who, along with his son, monitor each other’s porn proclivities via some app that allows each to keep tabs on the other, that guy who, while professing to be a devout Christian, has sold his soul to Donald Trump, the very personification of the seven deadly sins. Yeah, that guy.

At the same time that he visibly shines his halo, he piles on an old, feeble man. Where’s the love, man, that Jesus bade us display every waking minute of our lives? Where’s the compassion for the poor, the hungry, the homeless, or more important, those without the financial resources to contribute five- and six-figure dollar amounts to political campaigns and PACS? Where’s the Party of Lincoln that long ago sold citizens out in favor of (read moneyed) corporate interests?

I’m alluding to, of course, Johnson’s statement on CNN that Joe Biden should immediately resign from office.

The exact quote: “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately.”

But wait. Johnson, that man who has no problem whatsoever in abandoning his evangelical beliefs if it benefits the Repugnantcan Party, took it a step further by implying that he would prefer that Biden remain in the race:

“Having invalidated the votes of more than 14 million Americans who selected Joe Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president, the self-proclaimed ‘party of democracy’ has proven exactly the opposite,” Johnson said.

Wait. What? Is Johnson, in the same interview, only seconds apart, saying on the one hand that Biden should resign the presidency and on the other that he should remain in the race?

Apparently so. Bear in mind that Johnson, from up in Benton in northwest Louisiana (when I was growing up in Ruston, we considered that to be part of East Texas), told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “THIS WEEK” that he thought it would be wrong to disregard the 14 million people who voted for Biden in the Democratic primaries to suddenly have their choice pulled from them.

Of course, being the self-proclaimed constitutional scholar, Johnson said he thought it well might be unlawful “in accordance to some of these states’ rules for a handful of people to go in a back room and switch it out because they’re, they don’t like the candidate any longer. That’s not how this is supposed to work. So I think they would run into some legal impediments in at least a few of these jurisdictions,”

Yeah, well, I can see where Trump and his toadies might want Biden to remain in the race after that abysmal debate performance last month. And truth be told, Biden is obvious slipping – much in the same fashion that Trump has “slipped.” I mean, Trump is the one who wanted to draw a hurricane’s path with a Sharpie. He’s the one who wanted to nuke hurricanes. He’s the one who suggested that we rake forests to prevent forest fires, and he advocated cutting open people’s lungs and pouring disinfectant on them an letting them dry in the sun to cure Covid. He’s the one who praised our Air Force for its heroic work during the War of 1812. He’s the one, during a Pearl Harbor Day observance, who didn’t know the significance of the USS Arizona.

And most recently, when Biden came up with a border security measure that Repugnantcans – including Johnson – found acceptable, it was Trump who called Johnson and directed him and the Repugs to reject the plan until after the election, apparently so Trump could claim the credit. I guess finding a solution to the border crisis wasn’t so urgent after all.

And of course, he’s the one who was going to eradicate the federal deficit in what, six weeks? Instead, he increased it by $7 trillion – that’s trillion with a T. Of course, all those socialism haters are probably ecstatic that he wants to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – except those who are benefitting or plan to benefit from the programs, which includes just about everyone.

I have never, in my 65 years of following politics (I developed a keen interest in government around 15, thanks to my high school civics teacher Ervin Ryland) witnessed an entire culture (Repugnantcans) like we now have, from the local level all the way up to Congress and the Supremely Unscrupulous Court, so intend on dismantling the 248-years of our democratic republic the way I’m now seeing.

Whenever I hear Johnson and people like Jeff Landry, those self-anointed paragons of virtue and holiness, motherhood and marriage covenants, speak it reminds me of one of my favorite Earl Long quotes. Speaking of 1947 gubernatorial opponent Same Jones, Uncle Earl quipped that Jones was “the only person I know who can talk out of both sides of his mouth and whistle in the middle.”