“Speaker” Mike Johnson just stepped in it

Right wing politicians nearly always end up having a bunch of bizarre personal scandals and/or egregious corruption scandals hiding in their closet. It’s part of why they have to be right wing politicians; it’s the only portion of the political spectrum where supporters simply don’t care about things like scandals.

Even as we wait for the media to dig up Mike Johnson’s lifetime of scandals, Johnson’s lifetime of making asinine far right remarks is already catching up with him. For instance new footage has been unearthed of Johnson claiming in 2016 that mass shooting are the result of things like divorce. No really, he said this. There are a number of social media posts incorrectly claiming that Johnson made the remark this week, when he actually said it seven years ago. But it’ll still work against him.

What Mike Johnson is about to find out the hard way is that there are two different career tracks for right wing politicians. You can either spend your career saying the kinds of patently insane things that appeal to far right lunatic voters and become a minor king on the far right (see Jim Jordan), or you can spend your career pretending to be a reasonable moderate so that you can find your way into a leadership position (see Kevin McCarthy). But you can’t do both.

Mike Johnson has clearly spent his political career marrying himself to far right batshit crazy positions, so that he could move up the far right ranks. But when he saw a fluke opening last week in the race for Speaker, he took it – even though he’s spent his entire career saying and doing the kinds of things that will make it very difficult for him to last long in a party leadership position.

So yeah, Mike Johnson stepped in it – not in 2016 when he made this remark, because that was the career path he was on at the time. He stepped in it last week when he decided to run for Speaker, knowing he has the kind of resume that’ll instantly turn moderate voters against him. The mere existence of “Speaker Mike Johnson” should shift at least three to five moderate House seats in the Democrats’ favor in 2024. House Republicans have made a huge mistake by elevating this guy.