A moment I can't stop thinking about

On stolen elections.

(House Speaker Mike Johnson)

Last week, after Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson won an internal vote of House Republicans to be the next Speaker of the House, he held an impromptu press conference surrounded by his fellow GOP members.

Rachel Scott, a reporter for ABC News, spoke up — asking Johnson this: “You helped to lead the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Do you have any…”

She never got to finish her question because she was interrupted by laughter, booing and calls to “shut up.” (That last one came for North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx.)

Johnson, for his part, shook his head, rolled his eyes slightly and said “next question.”

You can watch it all unfold here.

It’s been a week since that happened. And yet, I can’t seem to stop thinking about it. Because, for me, it typifies so much of where Republicans have gone wrong — and why I have very little hope that things are headed in the right direction any time soon.

Start here. It is undeniable that Johnson, as Scott’s question noted, was intimately involved in House Republicans’ effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Johnson came up with the legal theory that undergirded House Republicans’ amicus brief in support of a Texas challenge to the results in four swing states. (Johnson’s argument was, essentially, that the Constitution expressly gives the power to select electors to the state legislatures. And that governors and secretaries of states — in changing ballot rules in response to the Covid-19 pandemic — had overstepped that constitutional mandate.)

He also said a number of things in the aftermath of the election that suggested his was more than just a legalistic argument about the results.

“The allegation about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with the software by Dominion — look, there’s a lot of merit to that,” he said at one point.

“In every election in American history, there’s some small element of fraud, irregularity,” Johnson said in another post-election interview. “But when you have it on a broad scale, when you have a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, when you have testimonials of people like this, it demands to be litigated.”

And then, of course, there’s this fact: Johnson was one of 139 House Republicans (and eight Senate Republicans) who voted to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona.

These are facts. On the record. Indisputable.

As is this: There was — and is — NO credible evidence of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election.

The Associated Press did a soup-to-nuts review of election fraud claims in December 2020 — and returned with this conclusion:

An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.

Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.

The cases could not throw the outcome into question even if all the potentially fraudulent votes were for Biden, which they were not, and even if those ballots were actually counted, which in most cases they were not.

The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the voting. Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots.

The findings build on a mountain of other evidence that the election wasn’t rigged, including verification of the results by Republican governors.

Given that reality, it seems entirely fair — and important! — for a reporter to ask the soon-to-be-House Speaker (the second-in-line in presidential succession!) whether or not he stands by a proven falsehood. And not just any proven falsehood — but one that seeks to erode the very foundations of American democracy.

And yet, not only did Johnson refuse to answer the question — as he has done several times over the subsequent week — but he and his colleagues mocked the reporter for asking it. As though this was some “gotcha” question. An ill-intended member of the media just out to get Johnson in his moment of triumph. Something totally out of bounds.

In case you think this response by House Republicans was an isolated incident, let me remind you of something that happened the day after this press conference — on the House floor.

California Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar was speaking — nominating House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as the party’s preferred Speaker candidate.

“House Republicans have put their names behind someone who has been called the most important architect of the electoral college objections,” Aguilar said of Johnson.

“Damn right,” yelled an unidentified Republican member of the House.

So, yeah.

To summarize where we are: One of our two major political parties no longer views election denialism as a bad thing. In fact, they champion it — elevating a man to Speaker of the House who made his name on his opposition to the election. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that Trump, the leading election denier, is running away with the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

The party has even gone so far as to throw out those who are willing to take a public position against election denial. Adam Kinzinger was driven into retirement for taking that view. Liz Cheney was crushed in a primary for breaking with her party on the 2020 election. And, just today, Colorado Rep. Ken Buck announced he would retire from Congress in 2024 at least in part because “the Republican party continues to…rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen.”

That fact is of increasing relevance as we look to the 2024 election.

As Jonathan V. Last writes today on The Bulwark:

In 2020, it was considered outré to vote against certifying the election. Voting against certification was a performance piece for many Republicans. But even at that late date, for a large minority of the party, voting to certify was a matter of conscience, a line that they believed should not be crossed. Several of these Republicans took this matter so seriously that after the fact, they voted to impeach Trump for his attempted coup.

Today, nearly every Republican impeachment voter has been cast out of Congress—and having voted to certify the 2020 election has become a disqualifying act for Republican House leadership. The Republican speaker is now a man who not only voted to overturn the election but who backed a preposterous lawsuit attempting to do the same.

So what do you think the state of play will be for congressional Republicans in late 2024 and January 2025 if Joe Biden wins?

Here’s my prediction: In the House there will be enormous pressure on every Republican member not to certify. Voting to certify a Biden victory will be seen as tantamount to voting to impeach Trump. It will be to invite a primary challenge and disqualify you from seeking any higher office.

Scary, no?

What’s worse is that I see no way much of anything changes between now and next November that stops such a scenario from taking place. Trump is already laying the groundwork to claim, if he loses, that the 2024 election was fixed. And the Speaker of House is a guy who seems — if past is prologue — likely to agree with him.

When people ask me what keeps me up at night, it’s this: We are not a functioning and healthy democracy if we can’t agree that when the election is over both sides respect the judgment of the public. And that’s where we are today.