I was listening to a dissident right pundit recently. It was about the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. A lot of it had to do with the process the Republican Party uses to vet its members. Basically, it was said that it selects for those who will follow the orders of the leadership and by extension align with the policies that the donors want supported. So, for Republicans that means providing legislation that helps for example, pharmaceutical and defense companies. But it also includes the banks and Wall Street and any other power centers that have lobbyists that Republicans are paid by.
And I can see how a lot of that is true. Guys like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell are wholly owned subsidiaries of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and never saw a war they couldn’t get behind. And during the recent COVID madness Pfizer was spreading all those billions it made on vaccines among the Democrats and Republicans like it was candy corn at Halloween. So, I can see the point being made by the dissidents. The system is rigged to keep out anyone but the kind of people who perpetuate its mercenary function. And with such people the chance of the will of the constituents being honored is non-existent. So, I grant that.
But then how do we recognize and support the people who somehow manage to sneak through this vetting and could be part of the solution? Look at Donald Trump. Trump crashed the Republican presidential primary. He gutted Jeb Bush and disrupted Hillary Clinton’s coronation when everyone knew it was “her turn.” Sure, he was hamstrung by Democrats and Republicans and most forcefully by the Deep State but I deny that he didn’t try as best he knew to accomplish the items on his agenda. To claim he was just another bought and sold member of the Uniparty doing the bidding of Black Rock and the CIA seems completely false. I don’t claim that he had immense success in reforming the federal government. What I do claim is that he was a legitimate representative of the people who voted him into office. He authentically wanted to fulfill the promises he made during his campaign. He had legitimacy.
So the trick is figuring out who are the other bona fide conservatives who are willing to help us win the battles that we so badly need won. Let’s start with Mike Johnson. I heard the arguments about how Johnson was a part of the machine that produces “Christian” lawmakers. But when I look at the cases that he was involved in and the laws that he fought for I see a very socially conservative record.
In 2003 he wrote an amicus brief in front of the Supreme Court for Lawrence v. Texas which struck down the Texas sodomy laws. And in 2004 he defended Louisiana’s law defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. To me this sounds like someone whose priorities are in line with my own. And after the 2020 election Johnson voted to overturn the presidential election results. That doesn’t sound like someone who just follows the Uniparty to get along.
The only way I think I’ll be able to tell if Johnson is a legitimate conservative legislature is if as Speaker of the House, he shows a willingness to resist the very mercenary and illegitimate behaviors that were mentioned in the dissident essay I was discussing earlier. For instance, Joe Biden asked for a hundred billion dollars of aid that would mostly go to Ukraine but had Israel getting about ten billion. Instead of passing such a bill Johnson got a bill passed that just gave the ten billion to Israel. The sympathy that Israel had among Republicans after the Gaza terrorist attack ensured that such a bill would be passed. Refusing to tack on a Ukraine payment that is an order of magnitude larger seems what I would expect of someone who is practical and smart.
I’m willing to see what Mike Johnson achieves. That’s how I’ll decide if he’s for real. That doesn’t seem idealistic. It seems pragmatic.