Oct.15

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Freaky Tuesday?

We imagine most readers are familiar with at least one version of the film Freaky Friday. There have been five of them, and they all involve the two main characters (usually a daughter and her mother) swapping bodies.

We could not help but think of that movie this week, as we saw some of the stuff that's been coming out of the mouths of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Starting with Johnson, when he was chosen as speaker in the first place, he had a reputation for being somewhat quiet, but also pretty Freedom Caucus-y. That allowed him to split the difference between the main House GOP factions. Since he wasn't loud and crazypants—like, say, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX)—Johnson was tolerable to the Main Street Republicans. But since he was still kind of crazypants, he was acceptable to the Freedom Caucusers.

For most of his time as Speaker, Johnson has mixed "statesman" and "partisan" in about equal measure. That is to say, you could not doubt that he was a Republican, and was touting the Republican Party line. But he also kept his inner loony bird in check. That's definitely been changing in the last couple of weeks, as Johnson has been channelling his inner Donald Trump. Among the "highlights":

• He described the COVID-era Obamacare subsidies as a "boondoggle." Whether they are or they are not, telling the voters who like the subsidies that their favored program is a "boondoggle" seems like bad politics to us. In addition, Johnson said that all the subsidies do is increase insurance costs for everyone. This is demonstrably not true. Without getting too weedy, the more people who have insurance, generally speaking, the cheaper it is for everyone. What keeps insurers from gouging customers is... competition from other insurers. Strange, we thought Johnson and his party liked capitalism. Or, at least, understood how capitalism works.
  
  
• Johnson has, of course, kept the House in recess, in no small part to avoid swearing in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D), and thus to keep Epstein Mobilier on the back burner. Given that the government shutdown, and thus the recess, might linger for many weeks, it might actually be worthwhile for the Democrats to take this to court, and to try to get an order to swear Grijalva in. At least, Arizona AG Kris Mayes thinks so. She issued a statement yesterday in which she said her office was strongly considering litigation.
  
  
• On Friday, Johnson participated in a meeting of the Freedom Caucus. That is the first time a sitting speaker has done that.
  
  
• During one of his press conferences about the "Democrat shutdown," he decreed that "a Marxist ideology [is] taking over the Democrat Party" and that the Democrats are "turning us into a Communist country." Not easy to do when you control 0.0% of the trifecta, but there it is. At another press conference, Johnson shared "six simple truths" about the shutdown, which might as well have been written—and probably were written—by Fox entertainer Sean Hannity.
  
  
• For some reason, the upcoming No Kings protests have many Republicans in ultra-freak-out mode this week (more on this subject on Friday). Johnson, for his part, referred to the protests as a "hate America rally" and "pro-Hamas."

It's not too hard to figure out Johnson's right-populist turn. Power corrupts, as Ben Franklin once observed. Johnson has learned he likes being something more than a backbencher from Louisiana, and he does not want to give that up. There is virtually no chance that the moderate elements of his conference will rebel against him, but the MAGA elements could, and the MAGA element in the White House definitely could. So, Johnson has committed to kissing major MAGA tuchus, even if he often sounds like Baghdad Mike while doing it.

And we are not the only ones to notice the new role the Speaker seems to have taken on. Over at The Bulwark, in a piece headlined: "The Speaker of the House Is Abetting Authoritarianism—Every Trump needs his Johnson: a flunky who will rationalize his crimes," Will Saletan writes:

Johnson isn't wrong to fear dictatorship in this country. He's just wrong about where that threat is coming from. It's coming from his own party. And he's paving the way.

To bring a democracy under authoritarian control, you need more than a strongman. You need politicians who will assure the public, as we slide toward one-man rule, that nothing odd is happening. That's the role Johnson is playing in Donald Trump's takeover of America.

We don't see anything there we disagree with.

And then there is Marjorie Greene. A quick review of some of the things she's done or said in the past few weeks:

• She is, of course, one of the signatories to Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-KY) discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
  
  
• She has also called, multiple times, for the Obamacare subsidies to be extended.
  
  
• She has declared the situation in Gaza to be a genocide.
  
  
• She says the time has come to end the filibuster, and that the only reason that it hasn't happened is that the Republican men in Congress are "weak."
  
  
• She lambasted the ICE raids, decreeing that there "needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them."

Seriously, look at that list again. If you didn't know we were talking about Marge Greene, that could easily be a list about Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) or Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN) or Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). Welcome to... The Twilight Zone.

No, no, it's not really the twilight zone. Greene, like Trump, has always been someone who lacks a coherent political philosophy, and who is basically driven by emotion. Trump/Greene see something on TV that upsets them, they turn around and carp about it. We don't doubt that Greene is being genuine in the various sentiments she expresses above, but she could easily do a 180 on any or all of them in the next month, because that is how she and Trump both roll. What that means, more broadly, is that while there is much temptation, at least for some people, to read Greene's rebellion as a sign the MAGA coalition is cracking, we really don't think that's so. She marches to the beat of her own drummer, and that drummer is just playing a weird tune right now. Maybe something from Milford Graves or Tony Oxley.

We started this piece with a note about Freaky Friday, but we must admit that doesn't quite work. Johnson is speaking like he's been inhabited by the spirit of Greene, but Greene does not sound like the Mike Johnson of 2024. To make it actually work, you really have to imagine a freaky threesome (no, not the kind they have in Scranton). Really, Johnson is talking like Greene, Greene is talking like a left-wing populist, and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is talking like a moderate Republican. If you look at it that way, then the body-switching theory actually works pretty well. (Z)