Conservative Speaker Mike Johnson Has All The Right Enemies

CHQ Chairman Richard A. Viguerie has for many years been telling conservatives to evaluate candidates based on their associations, “Who you walk with tells me who you are,” as he so

succinctly put it.

Now, in the post-2016 era there may be a corollary to that timeless political wisdom: Who is against you tells me who you are. Or perhaps more harshly, “Who your political enemies are, tells me who you are.”

And, if that’s true, then newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has all the right enemies.

Speaker Johnson is an Evangelical Christian who has regularly invoked his faith since being elected Speaker., when he attributed his election to prayer, not politics. Mike Johnson had barely picked up the gavel for the first time before celebrities, commentators, and special interests on the Left, especially the radical homosexual lobby, began to attack him.

The UK’s Daily Mail reported Left-leaning media figures including HBO host Bill Maher and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki have slammed Johnson for his views, with Maher sparking controversy by comparing the speaker to Maine mass shooter Robert Card as they both “heard voices.”

Psaki labeled Johnson as a Christian "fundamentalist," and the Far-Left Daily Beast, called the new Speaker a “Christo-fascist” who seeks to impose his religion on others such as the Taliban and the “mullahs in Iran.”

Politico even went so far as to find a historian to interview about Johnson’s worldview, and this historian claimed he is a Christian nationalist, and that he comes at things from a position of Christian supremacy.

In one widely circulated attack, Johnson has been criticized for opining that the fall of the Roman Empire was in some measure due to its moral decay.

“Some credit to the fall of Rome to not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society,” Johnson said in a widely circulated 2008 audio clip from an interview conducted when he was an attorney representing religious liberty clients.

According to reporting by the UK’s Daily Mail, between 2006 and 2010, while Johnson was an attorney for the conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defense Fund - an organization labeled as an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its long-standing opposition to LGBTQ rights.

“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we're born with and we cannot change,” Johnson said during a radio interview,

“What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it's not something that you are.”

He has also made statements in the past characterizing same-sex relations as “inherently unnatural” and “harmful,” reported the Daily Mail.

In September 2004, Johnson voiced his support of a Louisiana amendment banning same-sex marriage.

“Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone,” he wrote.

In another column from the same year, Johnson described same-sex marriage as a “moral lapse,” adding: “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”

The Daily Mail reported Johnson’s most recent comments on the subject of the radical homosexual political movement came in a 2005 op-ed, where he stated: “Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do. This is a free country, but we don't give special protections for every person's bizarre choices.”

Prior to entering politics Speaker Johnson was a partner at Kitchens Law Firm and chief counsel for the nonprofit firm Freedom Guard.

Johnson described his legal career as focusing on “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.”

From 2004 until 2012, Johnson served as a trustee of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Then, for one term, Johnson was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for the 8th district from 2015 to 2017.

That Johnson’s comments same-sex relations are “inherently unnatural” are self-evidently true matters not to his critics on the Left, who long ago subverted the media to their position.

To his credit, Speaker Johnson replied to his critics with Biblical power, saying, “Of course, our religion is based on love and acceptance. So, to compare that worldview with the Taliban, who seek to destroy their enemies, or with some deranged shooter who murders people is absolutely outrageous. And I think that everyone who follows and believes in a Judeo-Christian worldview should be just terribly offended by that.”

“But what really hurts me is that it really is a statement about everyone who believes in this, that the country was built upon – our Judeo-Christian foundation is the heritage of our country,” Johnson said according to the Daily Mail.

While the attacks on Mike Johnson demonstrate the truth of Mr. Viguerie’s aphorism that “who you walk with tells me who you are” and its corollary, “Who your political enemies are, tells me who you are,” it also puts us in mind of a bit of wisdom from former President Donald Trump: “They’re not after me, they’re after YOU, and I’m just in the way.”

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