New House Speaker Johnson is a clear rebuttal to the overall liberal societal drift that’s happening in the United States. His views are far out of step with the average American and even with a significant number of Republicans. White evangelicals still have a very strong hold on the modern Republican Party. They are losing overall market share in the larger culture, but they are certainly taking on an outsized role in Republican politics.
Johnson is an example of second-wave Trumpism — politicians rising in Trump’s wake who come with the same policy priorities and ideological proclivities, but in a far more congenial and urbane package, propelled by something more than personal grievance.
Disclaimer: The author has no animosity towards Christianity as a religion, nor the work it does to fight for people at the margins.
Evangelical Protestants were a commanding 38 percent of Republicans in 2020, mainline Protestants have fallen to 17 percent and Catholics have grown to 25 percent.
Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.
The election of Johnson reflects the success of the Christian right in a long-term struggle to wrest control from traditional Republican elites, in battles fought out in Republican primary elections.
The decimation of moderate and centrist members of the House was most striking over the election cycles from 2010 to the present, with the vast majority of successful challenges happening in the most evangelical districts.
Not only do Republicans overwhelmingly represent the districts with the most white evangelicals, but those Republicans are deeply entrenched, with little or no danger of losing the general election to a Democrat:
The MAGA movement was unleashed with the Tea Party movement in 2010, well before Donald Trump emerged as a dominant political figure.
It is not surprising, to see an election-denying evangelical Christian who favors a national abortion ban, Bible courses in public schools, and ‘covenant marriage,’ and who believes that L.G.B.T.Q. people are living an ‘inherently unnatural’ and ‘dangerous lifestyle’ elevated to the speakership.”
Democrats chose a candidate who can manage the economy 57-40, a view shared by independents by a smaller margin, 53-45. Republican voters, in contrast, preferred a candidate who will preserve is no longer operating beneath the surface or in the background.
Johnson likes to say that the US is a “republic” and not a “democracy.” He means that the majority does not and should not get its way. That would be democracy. A republic means rule by the virtuous, not the majority. And the virtuous are of course conservative Christians like him.
Speaker Johnson apposes LGBTQ+ rights and is an election denier.
Johnson wants to protects rich white-collar criminals since he proposed that Mr. Biden must agree to cut money the Internal Revenue Service uses to chase down high-income tax cheats
Reducing the I.R.S. budget would actually widen the deficit, the opposite of what Republicans claim they care about. Research found that every additional dollar spent on auditing high-income taxpayers yielded $12 in new revenue for the Treasury.
But making sense isn’t really Mr. Johnson’s game. The new Republican speaker has chosen to put a poison pill in the foreign aid bill. Another indication of the Speaker’s need to mobilize the government against people at the margins. The NABWMT fights for these people and ask you to support thier values.