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Mike Johnson Has Lost the Moral Narrative
Most Americans don't believe that starving children so you can cut healthcare is "pro-life"
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MAGA’s Mike Johnson built his whole political career on an appeal to the moral high ground. Raised in Shreveport, Louisiana’s Southern Baptist culture, he was a member of the first generation of Southerners to inherit the Religious Right’s framing of reactionary politics as “religious” rather than “racist.” Strom Thurmond and George Wallace had told Johnson’s parents that segregation was a political good that godly people must use political power to defend. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson taught Johnson’s generation to pursue the same control of government in the name of “traditional values.”
A thespian in high school, Johnson honed the skills he needed to play the part of the appropriately humble Christian crusader for causes that religious nationalists named as good and holy. He became a lawyer and spent most of his career making Constitutional arguments for a narrow set of cultural wedge issues that evolved with the needs of each national election. When attacking gay marriage was the rally cry of the right, he defended it in court. When “religious liberty” became a tactic for white Christians who believed they were persecuted to argue that they did not have to comply with federal law, Johnson was there to litigate. He summed up his legal career as a series of cases devoted to “defending religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and biblical values, including the defense of traditional marriage, and other ideals like these when they’ve been under assault.”
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After the rise of the Tea Party, Johnson continued to play his part as a righteous crusader, riding this moral narrative to public office in Louisiana and then to the US Congress in 2016 - the same year that Donald Trump was elected President for the first time with the endorsement of religious nationalists.
If Trump was the unrighteous “King Cyrus” who religious nationalists believed their god could use to impose his agenda, Johnson was the faithful Christian soldier who would make sure that every head was bowed when it came time to bless the nation.
But Johnson’s faithful service to MAGA’s would-be king has exposed the bankruptcy of the false moral narrative that he has championed his whole public life.
The Speaker of the House who claims that his career has been about defending the sanctity of life and biblical values now finds himself in the position of holding food for hungry children hostage so his party can take healthcare away from millions of Americans.
This defender of “religious liberty” has slashed Medicaid to finance masked men who shoot unarmed pastors with pepper balls on the streets of Chicago. When asked at his press availability how he justifies this violation of free speech and religious freedom, Johnson can only answer, “I don’t know,” and “I’m not aware of the details.” After keeping the House shuttered for more than six weeks, he insists that he is “too busy” to pay attention to the policy violence that he has enabled.
After decades of arguing that “Thou shalt not lie” should be inscribed on the walls of America’s courts, Johnson willingly lies to the American people every day.
Having ceded the role of Speaker to Trump, Johnson finds himself serving as spokesperson for an increasingly unpopular government shutdown. With every passing day, he’s sinking deeper into a moral quagmire. He isn’t robbing Peter to pay Paul - something poor people know a lot about - but rather robbing the hungry and stealing healthcare from the low-income workers so that Trump’s rich friends can have a party at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate their record profits at a bacchanal that would make Johnson’s church friends blush.
In the New Testament, St Paul uses the word “anathema” to keep from cussing when he describes this kind of religious hypocrisy. Today, most people look at what Mike Johnson is doing and say, “That’s just wrong.”
Last week, we were at the US Capitol with a Moral Monday delegation to share the stories of people who are directly impacted by the extreme cuts to nutrition assistance and healthcare that Johnson pushed through Congress this summer. Because we know this is a moral issue, we asked to meet with leadership from both sides of the aisle. Leader Jeffries hosted our delegation for over a hour and invited six of his colleagues to listen with him before holding a press conference to share what they’d heard. We’ve shared that story with readers here at Our Moral Moment.
How This Government Shutdown Ends | ||||||
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For weeks, political commentators have asked how this government shutdown will end. At the US Capitol today, we glimpsed a possibility. | ||||||
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But the rest of that story illuminates how much Mike Johnson understands that he is losing the moral narrative.
When we reached out to the Speaker’s office to let him know that a delegation of clergy would be at the Capitol and would like to pray with him, his Chief of Staff responded immediately, connecting us with the Speaker’s scheduling assistant. Just a few hours later - likely after someone in the Speaker’s office had watched the video recap of Moral Mondays that we sent with our request - she wrote to let us know that the Speaker was too busy to meet with us that day.
Seven days later, she has not yet been able to determine when he will be available to meet.
But before we arrived at the Capitol last Thursday, we learned that Johnson had partnered with his friends at the Family Research Council to call a press conference with clergy at the same time we would be holding ours with people directly impacted by cuts to SNAP and healthcare. Rather than answer to the people who are hurting because of his refusal to negotiate with Democrats and reopen the government, Johnson tried to counter program the prayers of those crying out for their lives with a religious nationalist prayer rally.
Johnson refused to hear the cries of the people who are hurting. If he had read his Bible, he would know that theirs are the prayers that God hears. “I have seen the misery of my people,” God says in Exodus 3, “and I have heard them crying out…. I know how much they’re suffering.”
These are the same voices that cried out with their votes in this week’s election. If Speaker Johnson will not hear them on Capitol Hill, they will still be heard. From Mississippi, where voters flipped three state Senate seats, to New York City, where an historic turnout of poor and low-income voters elected Mamdani, Americans showed up to opposed the extremism that MAGA has unleashed and to elect people who promise to oppose it.
That’s not a partisan vote, but a moral one. MAGA’s Mike Johnson has lost the moral narrative. Now is the time to build a movement that can claim it to rebuild a society that works for all of us.
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