Editorial – Deep Left Field

When the next Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025, one of the first things you can expect to see transpire is a vote to remove Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA).

On Thursday, Johnson watched as a bipartisan funding bill to keep the U.S. government running through the holidays went down in flames after both Donald Trump and Elon Musk signaled they didn’t want it to pass.

Mychael Schnell of The Hill explained Johnson’s precarious position as he tries to please members of the House GOP caucus and the Trump-Musk coalition, which appears to be a co-presidency, even though Musk wasn’t on the ballot.

“The fact that Mike Lee and, for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene also are floating other people for speaker, including Elon Musk, is a reflection of their discontent with speaker Johnson, and that’s the significant part here,” Schnell noted. “The House is going to gather in the chamber on Jan. 3 to select the next speaker of the House, and while Mike Johnson was unanimously nominated by his conference last month for the gavel, his grip on that looks extremely tenuous right now.”

“There’s at least one Republican, Tom Massie, who’s already saying he will not support Johnson on Jan. 3,” Schnell added. “I’ve spoken to a number of others who say they are uncertain, and they are very upset with how speaker Johnson is currently handling the spending deal. Talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene for a second, she was somebody who led the motion to vacate against Johnson earlier this year, then ultimately said she would support him. The fact that she is now floating somebody else shows how deep this discontent is with the Republican conference, and it is a worrying sign for Mike Johnson as he heads into the speaker vote next month.”

“I will note the whole conversation in the lead up to this spending fight was Republicans were saying, we are watching so closely to see how Mike Johnson handles this, this will determine if we can support him in January,” Schnell concluded “Right now, it’s not going well for him.”

While it’s certainly fun to watch Johnson get dealt a giant dose of karma, his imminent downfall raises a troubling question: Who will replace him? Might it be a hardcore MAGA maniac like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) or some other right-wing extremist who is only too happy to do the bidding of both Musk and Trump? If so, we could be in for some very dark days ahead.

Here’s a hypothetical question for us all to consider as we sit and watch election returns later this evening: What would the men who created our form of self-governance think if they could tell us their thoughts on the state of this country in 2024?

They’d probably be shocked by how badly divided we are as a nation, but then again, many in the fledgling United States circa 1776 thought it would be a disaster for us to seek our independence from Great Britain.

But in the end, the logic and reason of men such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison won out, making it clear that we could only go forward, not retreat into the way things were just because such a path was easier to predict and less fraught with uncertainty.

So here we are, 248 years after the Declaration of Independence created this nation, eventually making us “the indispensable” country across the globe, a beacon of freedom and hope while at the same time being a nation rife with hatred, racism, and xenophobia.

The most basic question of the 2024 election is this one: Will we choose fascism or freedom?

Fascism, it should be noted, is defined as “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

Take a good look at that definition. Does it sound like anything the men who created this republic would in favor of seeing take hold? They had just broken away from England and it’s tyrannical king because he had his foot on the colonies and refused to listen to their pleas for fairness and a modicum of freedom.

Freedom is a word that means many things to many people. It is technically defined this way:

“The power or right to speak, act and change as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of ‘giving oneself one’s own laws.'”^]

Now consider the two candidates seeking the White House in this election cycle, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Which one best represents the ideals of freedom and which one has verbally expressed a desire to set the nation on a course of fascism?

Some suggest that calling 2024 the most important election in American history is a ridiculous exaggeration But is it? After all, one party seeks to impose restrictions on the decisions women make about their own bodies, which in many ways is the most fundamental freedom of all.

Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it is also incredibly fragile, as Benjamin Franklin reminded us when he was asked what form of government the new nation would have.

“A Republic, if you can keep it,” Franklin told a woman who inquired.

We can keep it. We have kept it for nearly 250 years and we stand at yet another inflection point in our history. Harris represents freedom while Trump promises fascism. But at the end of the day, the choice is ours, and we’d be wise to continue on the path of freedom or watch as this nation devolves into chaos, hatred, and dictatorial rule.