White Embaled Evangelicals in the U.S. Senate: Reagan’s Last Days of the Republican National Convention, Revisited
Reagan anticipated Trump as a political figure. He had little personal history in the church but made a great show of his reverence for the rights of religious traditionalists. Reagan famously asked the throng of delegates at the Republican National Convention in Detroit in 1980 to bow their heads and pray with him as he accepted their nomination for president. Speaker Johnson was the one leading his flock in prayer after he got the big gavel.
The GOP has been gaining on the influence of white evangelical Christians since the late 1970s. Ironically, that was during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a Baptist Sunday school teacher and “born again” Christian.
It has to be said that the evangelicals punch higher than their weight in the electorate. In the latest measures of verified voters’ identities and preferences taken by the Pew Research Center, white evangelicals made up about one-fifth of all voters in 2016 and 2020, shrinking just slightly from 20% to 19% in 2020.
The First Five Years: When Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy Accused each other, Trump Corrected the Fake Claims of Election Corruptcy
Thereafter, Trump did put an endorsement for Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, one of the several candidates who would be nominated to succeed McCarthy but unable to get a majority of the whole House to elect him. Jordan had been perhaps the fiercest defender of the former president during Trump’s first impeachment proceeding in 2019.
The rebellion that ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October is still being discussed by conservatives. As president he had a relationship with McCarthy, even calling him “my Kevin” at times. This year he was not pleased to see McCarthy strike a deal with Democrats on the debt ceiling in the spring and again on the government shutdown deadline this fall. But the anger that boiled over and forced McCarthy out came from within his own ranks of House members.
The conservative Christian movement and its leaders owe their current status and power to the cooperation they have with each other.
Jordan was a big gain for the leadership because he had not been involved before. But in the end, even that endorsement was not enough. The fear among the Republicans was that Jordan’s abrasiveness would dim their reelection prospects.
When Jordan failed, the House Republicans entertained a new batch of candidates for their nomination, and among them, Johnson initially got just 32 votes out of more than 200. The field was narrowed to just Tom Emmer of Minnesota and Johnson, the House majority whip. Emmer had a victory of 117 to 97.
Trump had said earlier that Emmer wasn’t his pick because he was “out of touch with Republican voters” and a RINO. The Minnesotan had voted to certify the results of the election in 2020, apparently making him anathema to Trump and therefore to many House Republicans. Without even taking the issue to the floor, Emmer withdrew.
Johnson, a junior member of leadership little known outside Louisiana but a champion of Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020, suddenly stood tall. That hurdle was cleared by Trump. Johnson became the choice for his party’s confreres. They were finished with their personal preferences after three weeks.
Trump erupted with predictions of success for Johnson on social media. He is definitely the most pro-Trump speaker. He may also be the most conservative speaker in generations, and surely the most public about his religiosity. The first photos to go viral after his selection showed him leading the House GOP in prayer.
In 2020, when in just his fourth year in the House, he rounded up support in the chamber for a Texas lawsuit alleging the votes of four other states should be thrown out because court decisions had made it easier to vote in those states. The suit got attention from Trump because it was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
He is an activist against abortion and the rights of the gay and lesbian community, as well as as a legislator.
Source: Mike Johnson’s speakership marks a new phase in the white evangelical-GOP alliance
What Do You Think about the Future of the United States? Never Trump Evangelical Conservative Mike Johnson and the Birth of the Right Hand of God
Republicans have once again committed themselves to a viewpoint and an agenda that is deeply tied to the nation’s past, thanks to the elevation of Johnson to the Speakership. They have also recommitted themselves to those parts of the country where that past is most celebrated and admired, and to those voters most inclined to do so.
It has been proven again that Trump has more say in the House than the leading candidate for speaker, and the candidate with the most support among his colleagues.
The IRS under Carter had begun harsher enforcement of rules pertaining to private schools that are tax exempt. The Supreme Court ruled in a case that ended segregation in public schools.
That mobilized a cadre of parents and activists and coincided with the emergence of several new political organizations such as the Moral Majority, which was founded during the Carter years (1979) by Jerry Falwell Sr., who also founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. Johnson has been a paid online faculty member for Liberty as he served in the House.
It was also an time when white evangelicalism was taking hold of more Americans. Pat Robertson was the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network. His “Christian Coalition of America” was founded in 1987 and soon turned over to a young protégé named Ralph Reed.
The Christian Coalition became a major player in organizing votes for Christian conservative Republicans under Reed’s leadership. The group had such impact on the 1994 elections that gave the GOP control of Congress that Time magazine featured the 33-year-old Reed on its cover with the headline “The Right Hand of God.”
During his first interview as speaker, Johnson shared the basis of his political philosophy with Sean Hannity of Fox News, and people were curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.’ That’s my worldview.”
That quote isn’t as illuminating as people think. The Bible says a great deal about a great number of subjects, but it is open to interpretation on many and silent on many more. (It says nothing, for example, about the proper level of funding for the I.R.S., Johnson’s first substantive foray into policy as speaker.) I know Democrats who also root their political philosophy in the Bible. I’m a Never Trump evangelical conservative and I, too, look to Scripture to guide my mind and heart.
Mike Johnson and I have such similar religious convictions that we once worked together at the same Christian law firm. We worked in different states and different practice groups (I focused on academic freedom), but we both defended religious liberty, and we’d most likely both say much the same things about, say, the inerrancy of Scripture. Yet we’ve taken very different political paths.