GOP's new House speaker is willing to 'blatantly abandon democracy': historian

Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has repeatedly made clear that he doesn't really believe in democracy, and a historian explained the fallacies that underpin his worldview.

The Louisiana Republican started his political career by stepping unopposed into a state legislature race and has faced an opponent in only half the races he's run, winning handily in his heavily gerrymandered Shreveport district, but historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez told Politico that Johnson's understanding of politics and history is deeply influenced by Christian nationalism.

"I’ve noticed also in listening to his speeches that he is explicit about describing this country as a republic and not as a democracy. Inside these conservative Christian nationalist spaces, that is par for the course: that this is a republic, and it is a republic, again, founded in this biblical worldview, and that it’s not a democratic free-for-all, and so again, this is Christian supremacy," said Du Mez, a historian who specializes in evangelical Christianity and politics.

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Johnson has described democracy as "two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for dinner," and Du Mez said his fallacious understanding of U.S. history influenced his efforts to overturn Donald Trump's election loss and explains his willingness to abandon constitutional norms.

"His commitment is not to democracy," Du Mez said. "He’s not committed to majority rule; he seems to be saying he’s committed to minority rule, if that’s what it takes to ensure that we stay on the Christian foundation that the founders have set up."

Johnson's thinking also reflects a growing "anti-democratic turn among the Christian right" since Barack Obama's presidency, when conservative white Christians began to understand they no longer had numbers on their side and escalated their efforts to consolidate power.

"I think what has escalated things in the last decade or so is a growing alarm among conservative white Christians that they no longer have numbers on their side," Du Mez said. "So looking at the demographic change in this country, the quote-unquote 'end of white Christian America' and there’s where you can see a growing willingness to blatantly abandon any commitment to democracy."