The Hill has never had any real credibility, but they threw away any pretend credibility they had when they came up with the title that Democrats make Mike Johnson their new Boogeyman . There is no doubt that this is an attempt to deny that Johnson is an irresponsible extremist and unacceptable choice to be speaker of the House of Representatives. The words make and new and boogeyman make this clear. The Democratic Party did not make Mike Johnson a boogeyman; he already was intrinsically an irresponsible extremist choice to be speaker. The word boogeyman implies that the leaders and proposed speakers who got a vote were actually fine people who are responsible, but they are falsely being labeled. However, Gaetz, McCarthy, Jordan, and Scalise are all election deniers and extremists. The word new implies that the Democratic Party have just been throwing out unreasonable attacks on all the reasonable leaders and potential speakers the Republican Party has put forward. This is stupid and absurd.
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Matt Gaetz got this whole thing going with his one House Republican can move to vacate the chair deal and he was the power behind the Johnson elevation along with Donald Trump. Donald Trump incited the insurrection and has been indicted four times with 91 felonies charged. Jim Jordan was, according to republican Liz Cheney, the republican in Congress who knew more about the insurrection than any other republican in Congress. There can be no argument that Jim Jordan is not an extremist bomb thrower. Kevin McCarthy voted to not count electoral college votes and when he saw that republican voters would not punish Trump or republicans for the insurrection went down to Mar-A-Lago and kiss Trump's ass. He threw away his credibility by not keeping promises he made to the Gaetz wing and to Nancy Mace and to President Biden and by the stunt that he pulled with the CR. He knew that he had no credibility with the Democratic Party caucus in the House and so the plan was to put a clean (other than not funding Ukraine) CR but not give House Democrats enough time to review it and, thereby, entice them to vote it down and then say that House Democrats are unreasonable extremists because they voted down a clean CR. However, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries outsmarted him by creating enough time for House Democrats to review it, see that it was good enough despite the lack of Ukraine funding and pass it. He was stuck with his planned attack that no longer was accurate on Meet the Press to try to claim that we were the problems, but as the host pointed out, obliterating McCarthy's claim, House Democrats provided more votes than House Republicans. Furthermore, McCarthy didn't even try to make a deal to earn votes from House Democrats. McCarthy was a Trump voice within House Republicans. Scalise was an election denier who voted against counting electoral college votes. They didn't even give non-election denier Emmer a vote. So, the leaders of House Republicans and proposed realistic speakers put up for a vote are all truly irresponsible extremists.
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The Biden district Republicans like Ken Buck said that they would never vote for an election denier to be speaker of the House of Representatives. They just did. So, now they have to attempt to convincingly argue that Johnson is not an election denier when he actually is an election denier. So the go to move is to claim that all legal challenges are perfectly legitimate and that what democrats did in 2004 is the same as what Johnson and almost fully two thirds of House Republicans did.
This is absurd as all but the dumbest true believers know. There is such a thing as frivolous lawsuits. Johnson likes to label himself a constitutional attorney, but no real constitutional attorney would push the Texas lawsuit because it has no standing which even a 6-3 Republican Party dominated Supreme Court recognized.
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When even National Review recognizes that the Texas lawsuit is frivolous, then there can be no doubt that it is. NBC News and Pete Williams do a great job explaining why this lawsuit is frivolous .
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The second hurdle is that Texas has no legal right to claim that officials elsewhere didn't follow the rules set by their own legislatures. The United States doesn't have a national election for president. It has a series of state elections, and one state has no legal standing to challenge how another state conducts its elections any more than Texas could challenge how Georgia elects its senators, legal experts said. This case is hopeless. Texas has no right to bring a lawsuit over election procedures in other states," said SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who argues frequently before the court. " The lawsuit asks the Supreme Court for an order invalidating something like 20 million votes, which Foley said is unthinkable.
Officials from both parties in the states named in the lawsuit ripped Paxton's challenge as "a publicity stunt" loaded with "false and irresponsible" allegations.
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Lisa Marshall Mainheim wrote about how absurd this lawsuit is.
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Texas can’t block votes cast in other states. Absurdly, it’s trying.
The Supreme Court is sure to reject this latest attempt to overturn the election.
On Tuesday, Texas filed a lawsuit announcing its desire to interfere with voting processes in other states across the country. The lawsuit has no merit. It will fail. The effort though represents a galling expansion of Texas officials’ disregard for voters and the electoral process.
.The litigation is legally incoherent, factually untethered and based on theories of remedy that fundamentally misunderstand the electoral process. Among the more novel flaws afflicting this lawsuit is that Texas should not have filed it. Texas does not have standing in federal court to vindicate the voting rights of other states’ voters — much less standing to undercut the rights of those voters.To pile on further, the lawsuit demands a particularly inappropriate remedy: that the Supreme Court tell other state legislatures what to do. It appears impossible to square this extraordinary demand with basic constitutional principles, much less the Supreme Court’s recently strengthened conception of states’ rights.
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Other legal experts also made clear that this was a frivolous lawsuit
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'It's a frivolous case': Legal experts weigh in on lawsuit seeking to overturn election results
Blackman said the lawsuit makes little legal sense.
"I don't say this lightly, but this is a frivolous case," Blackman said.
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The Constitution gives state legislatures authority to administer their own elections
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Article I, Section 4, Clause 1: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
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Texas government officials have no legal right to control how other states administer their own elections. Therefore, they have no standing. A red state cannot dictate how a blue state administers its own election and blue states cannot dictate how a red state administers its own election. Otherwise, where would this stop. These Texas government officials were not harmed and they don't have a natural, organic connection to how a different state administers its election. What's even more blatant is that no federal court is going to throw out 20 million votes and disenfranchise so many people. Other than the dumbest pure ideologues, any real constitutional attorney would recognize these facts which make the Texas election lawsuit clearly frivolous.
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It's one thing to pursue legal challenges after an election that have real merit like happened in 2000. While Bush vs Gore's remedy was only decided 5-4, the general principle that the different standards violated equal under the law was affirmed by a 7-2 super majority. That wasn't frivolous. However, the Texas lawsuit is not that because, again, these Texas government officials have no standing for reasons explained above. It's also frivolous for other reasons including that the Constitution gives authority to state legislatures to administer their own elections and the courts were never going to throw out 20 million votes.
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Supporting a frivolous lawsuit to attempt to overturn the express will of the voters as made manifest in the presidential election makes you an election denier by definition. It's different than filing legitimate legal challenges to an election.
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An explanation of some of Mike Johnson's role in pushing the Texas lawsuit
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Washington — A Republican congressional ally of President Trump solicited more than 100 of his fellow GOP lawmakers to sign on to a brief with the Supreme Court in support of a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas seeking to delay certification of presidential electors in four battleground states won by President-elect Joe Biden.
Congressman Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, circulated an email, obtained by CBS News, from his personal account to GOP members Wednesday that asked them to join a friend-of-the-court brief to be filed in support of the effort spearheaded by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Johnson was a vocal defender of Mr. Trump during impeachment proceedings.
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AP makes clear Mike Johnson's role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election
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The new leader of one of the chambers of Congress that will certify the winner of next year’s presidential election helped spearhead the attempt to overturn the last one, raising alarms that Republicans could try to subvert the will of the voters if they remain in power despite safeguards enacted after the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Mike Johnson, the Louisiana congressman who was elected speaker of the House of Representatives on Wednesday after a three-week standoff among Republicans, took the lead in filing a brief in a lawsuit that sought to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win. That claim, widely panned by legal scholars of all ideologies, was quickly thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court.
After the 2020 election, Johnson also echoed some of the wilder conspiracy theories pushed by then-President Donald Trump to explain away his loss. Then Johnson voted against certifying Biden’s win even after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In an interview on a Shreveport, Louisiana, radio station 10 days later, he repeated a debunked claim about an international conspiracy to hack voting machines so Trump would lose.
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Republicans have tried to draw an equivalence between what Democrats in Congress did in 2004 and what Republicans in Congress did in 2020. However, they are very different.
In 2004, Democratic Party nominee for president John Kerry conceded right after the election was called for them President George W Bush. Therefore, there was no chance that the 2004 election result would be overturned and who won the election would be changed.
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On the other hand, then President Trump never conceded. Therefore, a chance that the election results would be overturned and Donald Trump would remain president remained.
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Democratic Party nominee for president John Kerry told then Senator Boxer not to vote against counting the electoral college votes for Ohio.
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On the other hand, Donald Trump encouraged his allies among republicans in Congress to vote against counting electoral college votes in the states that decided the 2020 presidential election.
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Senator Boxer told the public that she was not disputing who won Ohio, but only to protest voter suppression.
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On the other hand, Donald Trump's allies in Congress stated that they were disputing who won the battleground states which decided the 2020 presidential election.
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In 2004, one state determined who won the 2004 presidential election, namely Ohio.
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In 2020 the presidential election was decided by three states. .
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In 2004, there was only one Senate Democrat and very few House Democrats voted against counting the electoral college votes of Ohio. Thus, it was only done by a small faction and small fraction of Democrats in Congress. Therefore, again there was no chance that the loser of the election could overturn the results of the 2004 presidential election.
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However, in 2020, there ultimately were eight Senate Republicans and 139 House Republicans who voted against counting electoral college votes including MAGA Mike Johnson. 139 of 211 is almost 140 of 210 which is two thirds. Thus, almost two thirds of House Republicans voted against counting electoral college votes for the states which decided the presidential election. Therefore, especially when one considers that almost three for the of republican voters believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and since Donald Trump did not concede and was still trying to stay in office, having this many republicans in Congress vote against counting electoral college votes does risk overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election which was a free and fair election devoid of outcome altering voter fraud.
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These differences make what Mike Johnson and republicans in Congress in general and especially House Republicans did fundamentally different than what a few democrats in Congress did in 2004.
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Again, pushing an obviously frivolous lawsuit in an attempt to overturn the election results from the 2020 presidential election makes MAGA Mike Johnson an election denier. He even tried to whip up support for the frivolous Texas lawsuit. He pushed a Dominion voting machine conspiracy theory. He voted against counting electoral college votes from states that had already certified their election results. We are not exaggerating how radical and awful a choice Mike Johnson is to be speaker of the House of Representatives as the Hill implied. That's why he is called MAGA Mike Johnson. Therefore, there can be no doubt that he is an election denier and inherently, intrinsically irresponsible extremist choice to be speaker of the House of Representatives.
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Furthermore, he is a woman hater, a forced Birther of the most extreme type imaginable, a young Earth scientific creationist, and a theonomist.
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