Politics Sucks
Partisanship has given us Mike Johnson
When I first read that the Democrats in the House of Representatives were going to support the move to oust Kevin McCarthy from his position as Speaker of the House, I wondered what they were thinking. I’m not a Kevin McCarthy fan by any means, but we know there are worse people in the House than him. As if to drive home that point, we now have Mike Johnson, a die-hard MAGA conservative, darling of the NRA, unabashed hater of the LBGTQIA+ community, ultra-right-wing Christian as the Speaker. It seems to me that it should have been obvious by the fact that it was Matt Gaetz who led the charge for McCarthy’s ouster, and that the triggering event was McCarthy’s begrudging willingness to work with Democrats in a last-ditch effort to avoid a government shutdown, that the new speaker wasn’t likely to be *less* evil.
The only rationale I can come up with for the Democrats’ position is that they thought the chaos surrounding the speaker election, and having a more-MAGA speaker than McCarthy, would help tip the next election in favor of the Democratic Party. That may be true. It also may be true that in the year before the next election, Congress could pass legislation that would further codify LBGTQIA+ hate, disenfranchise more voters, expand gun rights, cause further hardship to those trying to immigrate into our country, shut down the government to extract concessions from the Democrats, and further damage our country’s standing in the world. It’s also not impossible that something could happen to President Biden and Vice-President Harris, which would put Mike Johnson in the oval office.
I have the same reaction to liberals who “switch parties” in primary elections so that the most extreme candidate for the opposition is selected. Again, the thinking is that such a person will be easier to beat, but what if that person wins?
Ultimately, these actions are putting politics, and political gain, above the interests of the people. Politics shouldn’t be all about the contest. We’re all better off when the best candidates from both parties face-off, giving us all a chance to hear their positions articulated and debated. We’re all better off when the best available people run, even if they are distasteful and hold positions of power. Gambling our present and/or future for the sake of partisan gain is, really, not much better than the crap the Republicans seem to pull on a regular basis.
