By Frank Miele for RealClearWire
“Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.”
That should be the mantra Democrats say after their weeks-long complaint about the Republican Party’s inability to elect a new Speaker of the House of Representatives following the Oct. 3 impeachment of Rep. Kevin McCarthy.
With each failed attempt to install a new chairman, Democrats and their fellow media travelers denounced Republicans and portrayed them as incapable of governing. When the Hamas massacre of innocents took place in Israel on October 7, Democrats seized on the attack for political purposes and lamented that the House of Representatives could not pass a resolution condemning the attack.
After three weeks without a speaker, the rhetoric had risen to the level of pure propaganda. Democrats and their media allies demanded to know why 217 Republicans could not agree on a speaker, pretending that the slim five-vote Republican majority was somehow easy to overcome.
“I deal with matters of life and death, serious tragedies and serious momentous events here in Israel,” Jake Tapper said on October 24 during a broadcast from Tel Aviv, Israel. “And of course we have to pause this for a moment to report on the complete clown car that is the race for the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington DC.”
Just one day later, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana was elected unanimously, giving Democrats exactly what they demanded: a unified Republican Party ready to do the people’s business.
Oops! Maybe that wasn’t what Republican critics wanted after all. Because as soon as Johnson began his duties as speaker, the liberal media, the White House, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries began attacking him as a MAGA extremist and longing for the good old days under chairman Kevin McCarthy, who they suggested had been good old days. running a well-oiled machine that already got the people’s business done.
Absurd! How can you explain the fact that McCarthy’s deal with President Biden suspended the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025, when the greatest danger facing the United States today is a national debt rapidly approaching $34 trillion? How do you explain the open border? How can you explain the lack of transparency and accountability regarding the billions of dollars in military and other aid sent to Ukraine?
The only way to explain these failures is that McCarthy served the Democrats’ agenda, either by advancing legislation that would benefit Democrats or by blocking activities that could benefit Republicans, such as releasing the thousands of hours of surveillance video from Jan. 6 or approving subpoenas for Hunter. Biden and his associates.
I can’t pretend I supported the coup against McCarthy. While I generally side with the MAGA crowd over mainline Republicans, I had a bad feeling about what would happen if Rep. Matt Gaetz would vacate the speaker’s chair and was joined by seven other Republicans — and every Democrat in the House of Representatives — to impeach him. McCarthy.
I was concerned that another Republican would replace McCarthy, possibly with support from Democrats. My best hope was that Representative Jim Jordan would somehow convince enough moderate Republicans to support him so he could replace McCarthy. That wasn’t to be, and yet I didn’t panic. As Democrats and the mainstream media worried about Congress’s inability to advance legislation in the absence of a speaker, I began to wonder if we might be witnessing one of those flashpoints in history when against all expectations and against their own expectations mortals became the vessel of divine providence.
That’s certainly what it looks like now. The election of Mike Johnson as Speaker is nothing short of a miracle – not just because he is a lesser-known congressman with little leadership experience, but because he is a man of faith who promises to govern based on Biblical principles. It’s almost as if he wants to make America great again, not following Donald Trump, but George Washington.
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Rep. Tom Emmer, who withdrew his own candidacy as speaker to make way for Johnson, summed up my own thoughts in a speech on the steps of the Capitol after the new speaker was sworn in.
“From the outside, the past few weeks probably seemed like total chaos, confusion and no end in sight, but from my perspective this has been one of the greatest experiences in the recent history of our republic,” Emmer said. “Mike is a strong man of faith, a constitutional conservative and a fierce fighter for our common sense Republican agenda.”
Similarly, in his first speech as speaker, Johnson suggested that divine Providence had controlled the “clown car” that saw Jake Tapper fall so quickly off a cliff.
“I don’t believe there is any coincidence in a case like this,” Johnson said. “I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one who elevates those in authority. He raised each of you, all of us, and I believe that God has ordained and allowed each of us to be brought here for this particular moment and time. This is my belief.”
Related: Speaker Mike Johnson Fires Back After Jen Psaki’s Meltdown Over His Being an ‘Extreme Christian’
Johnson also talked about our national motto, “In God We Trust,” and while he didn’t quote George Washington, he might have. It was President Washington who wrote in his “Farewell Address” to the nation at the end of his second term: “Of all the tendencies and customs that lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable pillars. In vain would man claim the honor of patriotism which should labor to undermine these great pillars of human happiness, these strongest pillars of the duties of men and citizens.”
As we watch the nation sink into a pit of moral ambiguity and chaos, it is surely time we heed Washington’s warning against those who would attempt to govern without a firm belief in God: “Whatever may be indulged in the influence of refined education in minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience forbids us both to expect that national morality can prevail to the exclusion of religious principles.
In other words, without a solid religious foundation, there is no hope for a moral nation, and morality is what binds us together as a nation of laws. We know Johnson believes the same thing, which is why he has become a favorite target of the left, especially when he told Sean Hannity that if people wanted to know his worldview, they should “pick up a Bible off the shelf and read it.” It.”
Bill Press, in a column for The Hill, called that statement “the most terrifying words of the 21st century.” Maybe so, for anyone who actually argues that the secularization of American governance has been a good thing. Ask law-abiding black citizens of New York or Chicago whether a government without morality is a good thing, and you will be greeted with stunned silence or hearty laughter. No one wants to live in the Wild West, except bandits.
Yet the Wild West is exactly what we have become. Flash mob gangsters have taken control of our cities. Illegal immigrants are flooding across our border in complete disregard for the rule of law. Mass shootings like last month’s in Maine have become commonplace. And Democrats are looking for an explanation everywhere but the obvious place: the failure to heed George Washington’s warning.
Related: Video: House Republicans Boo Reporter Asking Speaker Candidate Mike Johnson About the 2020 Elections
When Johnson told Sean Hannity, “In the end, the problem is the human heart. They’re not weapons. It’s not the guns,” he confirmed what our Founding Fathers all knew. That’s why we have a Second Amendment to guarantee our right to firearms instead of banning them: because the human heart is as fallible today as it was when the Book of Genesis was written. Christians call this tendency toward evil “original sin,” and they can demonstrate its continuity from Adam and Eve to the last mass shooting or threat of violence against Jews.
To leftists, who have largely rejected God and religion, this is folly, much like the way Paul described the inability of the intellectual and philosophical Greeks to accept the Bible’s message of salvation. Leftists believe they can solve every problem with legislation, and turn a blind eye to any evidence that this is not the case.
We hope that Mike Johnson, as speaker, will pass legislation that is sensible and prudent, but we can be assured that he knows that the success of that legislation to cure our woes will depend entirely on the extent to which our country repents of our selfishness and follows us. President Washington’s advice in his 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation:
“It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be thankful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his protection and favor.”
That this would happen today would be a true miracle.
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
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