[Commentator Hilzoy wrote this on Bluesky, which is still in closed testing. I like it enough that I want to see it published more widely, so (with permission) here it is.]
I actually think it’s worth listening to Mike and Kelly Johnson’s podcast, at least if want to understand our new Speaker. (shudders) Personally, I’d start with the first episode, which is rather interesting, at least if you are not deterred by what Josh Marshall called its 700 Club vibe. Then I’d listen to Episode 12, which is about Jan. 6. (Both of these are from 2022, but before the Congressional elections.) But for those who are not prepared to devote maybe an hour to this, a brief thread.
Episode 1 is about basic principles. Boy oh boy oh boy is it Christian, and not ironical Jesuit Christian, but full bore evangelical. (Plus I suspect that he and his wife are trying to model complementarian marriage, which ugh.) It also has some amusing historical errors. Did you know that socialism always leads to communism and thus to mass murder, for instance? DO NOT TELL THE SWEDES. – Johnson claims to know this because the people who invented socialism told us so. DO NOT TELL THE MANY, MANY NON-COMMUNIST SOCIALISTS OF THE 19TH CENTURY. I was also fascinated to learn that America has always had a very strong military, which I think would surprise people at the beginning of the 20th century.
But these are digressions, though I think they’re interesting, since they suggest that his history comes exclusively from conservative-land. Most of the podcast is about three foundations of our system of government. (1) Morality and religion. Here he cites various founders about the importance of a virtuous citizenry. (2) Active and engaged citizens. (3) Trust in institutions. (He recognizes that institutions need to merit trust.) I actually agree with a lot of this, stated as above in its basic form. My main disagreement is with religion, in (1): I think that as far as our system of government (as opposed to our salvation) goes, what’s needed is morality, not religion. The Johnsons vehemently disagree. Nowadays, they say, lots of people are losing their faith, and since this implies that they will lose all morality and all decency, we are in a serious predicament.
I disagree, naturally. I think that God is neither necessary nor sufficient to secure the foundations of morality. I think people can be good and decent and compassionate and honorable without believing in God, and (as seems obvious) that people who believe in God can be vile. But they do not, and that’s what matters, since he has become the Speaker of the House. 😬 No God -> no morality -> no more freedom. That said, while (as noted) both his history and his argument have, um, major mistakes, he does present a lucid and well-structured justification of his views, which is more than many theocrats do. He seems principled and smart. That’s why Episode 12 is so interesting.
As noted above, Episode 12 is about January 6. It sounds pretty plausible and unremarkable, as long as you know nothing about the arguments he’s advancing.1 He completely condemns the rioters. We need to respect the law, he says, and they brought shame on our country. He does not equivocate on this. But he and the other Reps who voted not to certify the election were totally different! They were charged by the Constitution with certifying the electors; they thought there were real Constitutional issues about some of those electors; they voted accordingly. Nothing to see here! And their objections were serious! The Constitution says that state legislatures set the rules for choosing electors, which includes rules for the elections in which those electors are chosen. The full legislature, he says several times. And other people, like judges, had changed them unilaterally!
Here you have to know about the Independent State Legislature Theory, which is what he’s advancing without naming it. It basically holds that when the Constitution says that the legislature gets to set the rules, it means the legislature, PERIOD. There will be no review by courts to see whether the rules the legislature sets are constitutional. There can be no provision whereby the Secretary of State, in consultation with public health people, can alter in any way e.g. provisions for drop boxes during a pandemic. JUST THE LEGISLATURE.
Analogy: Congress gets to modify electoral rules. Suppose it modifies them to say that there will be no polling places at all, or that no one whose first name begins with a vowel gets to vote, or some other insane thing. We normally think: the courts could decide whether that’s constitutional. But the Constitution says that “Congress” gets to modify these rules. It says nothing about the courts. Does that mean that the courts have no jurisdiction here? Or anywhere else where the Constitution gives a power to Congress or the Executive without adding “subject to review by the courts?”
No.
Here’s the thing. If you take Episode 1 at face value, you get someone who has a set of principles that I deeply disagree with, but who sounds smart and principled, as people I deeply disagree with can obviously be. But there is no – ZERO – way that the argument in Episode 12 is a principled one. Is he in general OK with putting whole elections on hold whenever we see such shocking irregularities as (checks notes) Pennsylvania being ordered by a court to provide people who vote by mail a way to “cure” ballots that are initially rejected because their signatures don’t match those on file?2 Are we supposed to go without a President while Congress decides what to do about this horror, which was ordered by A COURT rather than the legislature?
Obviously not. That would be stupid. Moreover, these objections were litigated in Court.
This is an argument designed to provide a rationale for Reps who wanted to support Trump, but needed a way to do that without going full-on crazy. It is not an argument you could possibly accept generally, through careful consideration of Constitutional history and law. And yet it sounds so sober-minded, even banal, when Johnson explains it. That’s why I said: don’t sleep on this guy. He is smart. He doesn’t sound even remotely mean. He drapes what he says in history and seemingly careful thought and the like. But he has genuinely theocratic views and the juxtaposition of Episodes 1 and 12 suggests that he is either capable of talking himself into whatever position suits his interests, or very cynical, or maybe both.
Case about one of the PA “irregularities” that Johnson goes on about. Summary of case. ↩︎
1 comment:
This guy will sure muck things up but the campaign ads for the Dems write themselves
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