October 25, 2023 09:13 AM UTC

Johnson Wins Speakership as Buck Stops Caring about The Big Lie

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #3: Colorado Congressman Ken Buck did what Buck does — he Buckpedaled. After pretending for weeks to be really concerned about whether the next House Speaker nominee embraced The Big Lie from the 2020 Presidential election, Buck just…stopped caring:

.@RepKenBuck makes a distinction between Jordan & Johnson’s j6 involvement; however, he didn’t ask him his view of the 2020 election in conference last night: https://t.co/U36NKgXBk1 pic.twitter.com/q3I4UcFTpF

— Jacqueline Alemany (@JaxAlemany) October 25, 2023

Equivocating between what Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson did or didn’t do surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection is nonsense. As The Washington Post noted on Tuesday:

Johnson also objected to certifying Biden’s electoral win and was one of the architects of a legal attack on the election that consisted of arguing that states’ voting accommodations during the pandemic were unconstitutional. He led a group of 126 Republican lawmakers in filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court alleging that authorities in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan had “usurped” the constitutional authority of state legislatures when they loosened voting restrictions because of the pandemic. [Pols emphasis] The court rejected the underlying complaint — filed by the state of Texas — citing a lack of standing, and dismissed all other related motions, including the amicus brief.

Johnson didn’t just say and Tweet supportive messages for Donald Trump — he wrote one of the main legal arguments that attempted to overturn the 2020 election.

Maybe Buck decided not to ask the question anymore because he already knew the answer, but it’s pretty gross that he’s suddenly okay with The Big Lie and even voted for Johnson as Speaker.

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UPDATE #2: Louisiana Republican Rep. Mike Johnson is elected Speaker of the House, ending more than three weeks of turmoil in which 12 other Republicans tried and failed to gain the Speaker’s gavel. Johnson received 220 votes, accounting for all Republican House members present for the vote.

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UPDATE: Rep. Matt “Giggity” Gaetz celebrates:

Matt Gaetz to Steve Bannon: “If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.” pic.twitter.com/Fl5l3iO4i9

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2023

The “Gaetz Eight,” including Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, have cast their lot.

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To read Politico report this morning, you might think that the paralyzed U.S. House majority has after weeks without a Speaker of the House finally figured out how to restore order after the “Gaetz Eight” ended Kevin McCarthy’s nasty, brutish and short term in the form of Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana–who you’re going to confuse with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston:

Late Tuesday night, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) became the latest GOP conference nominee, and this time there was no backbiting, no ultimatums, no snarky comments to reporters — just cheers and an overwhelming sense of relief.

It’s not over yet. Three lawmakers voted “present” during a roll-call poll of the conference, and 22 GOP lawmakers were absent, so it’s possible there might be a decisive handful of “Never Mikes” hiding out there.

But the lack of vocal opposition and surfeit of genuine enthusiasm that was aired last night on opposing sides of the House GOP marked a significant shift after three weeks of chaos…

Beneath the back-slapping and mutual congratulations over nominating the fourth speaker designate since McCarthy got the axe, there’s a problem with Rep. Mike Johnson that we were previously informed was a dealbreaker for Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado. NBC News:

Well before he secured the GOP nomination for House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., played a key role in efforts by then-President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in the 2020 election.

Here’s where it gets a bit complicated: Rep. Johnson helped write an amicus brief in 2020 supporting a failed lawsuit in Texas to invalidate the results of several swing state elections. That lawsuit was laughed out of court along with the rest of the legal challenges filed by Trump and his allies during this period, but the 125 members of Congress who signed that brief now have it on their conscience. They all helped, or at least tried to help, Trump steal the election.

And one of those 125 members of Congress was…Rep. Ken Buck. Since the filing of that brief in December of 2020, however Ken Buck has completely changed his tune on the 2020 elections, to the extent that failure to acknowledge Joe Biden is the lawful President of the United States was Buck’s central reason for opposing Jim Jordan’s nomination to be Speaker.

Said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker then helped block Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) from replacing him, last night on CNN: “I think [Johnson] gets it tomorrow.”

Based on this, you might be tempted to think that Rep. Johnson had been able to meet Buck’s previously-imposed litmus test for any* speaker candidate to be able to state clearly and without reservation that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

Not only has that not to our knowledge happened, here’s how Johnson and House Republicans prominently including Colorado’s other hard-right team troublemaker Rep. Lauren Boebert responded to a reporter’s question on the issue yesterday evening:

Reporter: You help lead the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, do you—

Republicans: *boo* shut up pic.twitter.com/L7R5fwhpIi

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 25, 2023

Let the magnitude of this sink in. On the same day that Trump attorney Jenna Ellis pled guilty to a felony for her role in the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a reporter who dared to ask speaker designate Mike Johnson about his own role in the plot was booed and shouted down by dozens of Republican lawmakers in a press conference. Their reaction goes beyond mere denial of contemporaneous events. It’s a chilling display of outright contempt for the rule of law.

How can Rep. Buck possibly go along with it, you ask? Unfortunately, the answer to that question may be the simplest. *Just hours before hard-right Rep. Steve Scalise pulled out of the race for Speaker, and with no retraction of his previous false statements about the 2020 elections that we could find, Buck announced that he was leaning toward supporting Scalise despite previously declaring that Scalise’s position on the 2020 presidential election was not acceptable.

When needed most, Buck’s principles are, to quote Captain Barbossa, “more guidelines than actual rules.”