We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
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Now I am joined today by Christopher Bedford, executive editor over at the
Common Sense Society, who has some thoughts on Mike Johnson, apparently a real
human American man, even though he sounds like a fictional corporate squash playing character.
It's just a haircut, Mike Johnson. The haircut looks like he plays
a little squash for sure. You are one of the only people in America
who has thought deeply about the question of Mike Johnson. Well, first,
I want to get to First, I want to get to that little hustle
you dropped in inut of the intro. Oh, go over there, support
the work. I respect the hustle. Did you see the the Twitter pictures
of George Santas earlier today, just hanging out at the Congressional Bank. I
do lobby, just talking to tellers. You mean on X. I don't
know what Twitter is. I don't Yeah dot com that re routes to Twitter
dot com. I don't know if you've noticed that, but uh, I
love that hustle. Like none of his colleagues want to talk to him,
No one's buying his bs. So he's down at the Congressional Bank like on
a Monday afternoon, is hanging out on the lobby for like half an hour
longer talking to Taylor's telling them he's going to put them into Kevin Smith movie.
I guess he's And it's just like that guy does not turn off.
I forget that you're a former tech executive, which is how you know where
its like rerouting. You threw me off first. I was like rerouting,
Where did he learn that word? In your stint as a tech executive?
You learned? I get I learned most of my vocabulary from eminem. But
you do actually have thoughts on Mike Johnson. Actually, Chris wrote a piece
for Fox News dot Com on the Mike Johnson Speakership from a perspective that actually
you won't hear in many places unless you are hearing it ad nauseum from the
left, just from a very different vantage point, which is immediately they pivoted
to this guy's a full theocrat. It was like the Daily editor, an
editor over at the Daily Costs, which is still a thing. I had
no idea that was still a thing. Yeah, still around. Tweeted something
yesterday because Mike Johnson said he believed he's on the floor of the House,
and he said, I believe, you know, according to scripture, according
to the Bible, that we are all, that God has chosen all of
us to be here at this moment, that God has chosen you, that
he chooses our leaders. And the editor from Daily cost witted like he's already
gone full theocrat. Never loved that. It was so was so refreshing to
hear his opening speech compared to like the Frank Luntz written Kevin McCarthy's speech is
like, when I am the Speaker of the House, I like to look
at this painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, which I hadn't realized that toother
speech was like actually just totally in the imagination of this German immigrant, like
one hundred years later and it's just like the boat is just this diverse collection
of the American people, and like that was Kevin McCarthy's speech, like diversity
in fake paintings and his opportunity and freedom and the entrepreneurs and usually they're like
and the first step to re routing the Republic and trying to fix it is
we're going to read the Constitution on the floor of the house. It's like,
okay, no one cares. And the people who wrote the Constitution understood
that it was an entirely insuab unsuitable document for emoral people. It would not
work. So to hear the Republican come out and to immediately be talking about
scripture, to say that the thing that brought him to tears was not like
the black guy in the Indian and possibly the woman in the fake painting.
It was the sculpture of Moses on the in the house chamber that he just
noticed when he was sitting there late one night doing speaker tempore when everyone else
was sleeping, as like a junior freshman job that they do. And he
talked about his family and not just like thanks to my family, it's like,
yay, it really sucks to be the kid of a congressman. There's
not a lot of pluses to it. It's difficult to be a way.
You know, my wife wasn't here. She can't even be here because she
has to fly in, and it was pretty short notice. He got elected.
But if you look at him, if you listen to the way that
Republicans talk, and you listen to the way Democrats launch attack ads, you
would be shocked to find out that there hasn't for decades been a social conservative
and Republican leadership. They don't care. Miss McConnell doesn't care at all.
I mean, he literally called for a truce and the culture wars during the
last election, which is funny. It makes me think it's like the culture
wars in his head are like nineteen eighties or seventies, when even the sixties,
like New York cops are breaking up gay bars and stuff. It's like
the culture war is not an offensive action from the right. The left is
in the right, Christian in American trenches, like bashing Christian bakers over the
head. The culture wars a defensive action entirely, not even Christian bakers.
I mean at this point, they're coming after secular people who just told the
wrong side of the un use the brown hounds. Yeah, they're just do
manion. And this is the subject of your frox news dot com column,
is that Mike Johnson is an actual social conservative speaker. And to be clear,
especially if there're anybody, if there's anybody on the left listening, I
know there are, you probably hear other speakers like Kevin McCarthy passed the Parents
Bill of Rights and wouldn't stop talking about it and think, oh, well,
that's a socially conservative speaker. We're talking about, like a movement social
conservative somebody I believe he actually worked at Alliance Defending Freedom every years. He's
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off your order today. The battle over social conservatism has really been relegated to
the backbenches of the GOP. For decades, the libertarian aspect, the business
aspect, corporatus aspect, and the warhawks have had the prime seats in Republican
debates. I mean, you see this from McConnell again, being like,
oh, somebody actually wants to talk to who would want to talk to me?
Excuse me, Mike Johnson. These people are They pushed the social observances
at the back. They blame them for electoral losses. Sometimes they have people
like Carl Rove I obviously didn't mention in the Fox News op ed because he
works there, who come out there and like, I could use the social
conservatives for something. Yeah, I'm gonna make George W. Bush say a
bunch of things, and you know, maybe we'll say we're gonna teach absidence
in schools, which is like, how dare you teach kids not to have
sex? It's insane? But that did not make them actually people who really
cared about that coalition and were easily ready to drop it. And you see
the rot that exists in Republican leadership, or the lack of attention being paid
to it, manifests itself every few cycles. Where candidates are trained, nominees
are trained, they're walked through their talks to They can answer questions about taxes,
they can answer questions about corporations, they can answer questions about Ukraine,
they can answer questions about Israel, but they absolutely flub as soon as they're
asked a question about abortion. They are so thankful that no one wants to
talk about marriage anymore. There's just been an atrophy of even the understanding of
these issues amongst Republican leadership. And it was unfill display when the House Representatives
passed a gay marriage bill a number of months ago, where you had like
thirty something Republicans who voted for it, including the chairman of the House Freedom
Caucus. And some of those people are intellectually honest. They've thought about the
issue and they think that you know, anyone who wants to pay the little
fee and get in line at the courthouse can get married. Other ones just
hadn't thought about it, and it was really clear. They're like, oh,
isn't that an issue from the nineties, Like, no, it's a
two thousand year old institution. Wait, my voters think that this is a
sacred thing and not just not just a way to pay your taxes differently or
have access to different economic rights. And the Speaker of the House Freedom Caucus
Chairman Perry, ended up in the awkward position of voting for it and then
having to lobby his Senate Republicans not to pass the ability voted for. And
that's just an example of people who hadn't thought about it. And this is
why he's like, I know, it blew everyone's mind. My social conservatives
loved Donald Trump, who's obviously someone who had not spent his decades in public
life thinking deeply about these things, but came to it. Seemed clear to
me before his debate in Las Vegas against Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen, the
last debate, that someone had been like, hey, let me tell you
what late term abortion is. And because of that, he went on the
offensive against Hillary Clinton, whereas most Republicans were like, oh, safe legal
rare, I mean, I'm personally against it, but I don't want to
talk about it, and my donors don't want to talk about it. My
top dollar donors don't want to talk about it. And it's a losing issue
and court and yeah, there's anything to avoid it. And Trump is like,
you know what this is. She's a nasty woman. This is awful
like and she made that. He made there to try to defend that,
and then he was the I think I also surprised a lot of people who
just get their kind of basic ideas about what the GOP stands for, from
what their talking points for Democrats attack heads. He was the first president to
ever go to the March for Life ever and so far the last the and
and that's why people liked him. And I know it made people who were
very comfortable being in a controlled opposition, like David French, feel uncomfortable that
the social Conservatives moved towards a brash and probably not always moral New York guy.
He was not part of their movement, but he was fighting for them
and they were that thirsty for it. But they've been kept out of this
leadership. So in Mike Johnson, who's like just friends with everyone, I
guess hasn't made enemies in Capitol Hill. He's a vice chair of the House
Republican Conference, right yeah, and a former chairman of the publicanst His committee
Study Committee, which was has long been a leadership thing. But still it's
disupposedly coming up with good ideas, uh from Louisiana. So it kind of
puts down Scalis's anger a little bit and have him been stabbed in the back
by his own fellow leaders when he when he got in line to get the
speakership, he was able to sail through. Well, he was. I
was, I remember laughing. I was. I had to sit in the
Fox fan for two hours yesterday waiting for a chance to talk. But we
ended up they ended up going with the entire vote. But once ken buck
voted for him, I was like, that's the most ordinary son of a
gun in Congress. Like ken Buckers says, yes, we're only on the
bees. This guy is gonna win. Yeah, so let's just you know,
put me on TV, put me in coach. But ken Bucks had
a weird arc and over the last like six months, yes, it was,
he's been uh, he's been curmudgeingly, he's been a roller coaster yeah,
but he voted for him and everyone's like, oh great. And also
of course there was a lot of just fatigue. People were sick of the
chaos. It was starting to look bad. Mac Eate's people are like super
pumped, like this is what we planned all the long. It's just funny
that the things that they've been grasping for because they didn't really have a I
haven't had an end goal for detail the hostage situation, Like they knew they
wanted to create a hostage situation, but they they didn't quite have the demands
yet. He endorsed what Scalie and Emma along the way at different points,
like people who would have been less I would say friendly to his cause than
McCarthy, like his actual ideological cause than Kevin McCarthy. I was talking to
one of his guys last week and the Ukraine funding was possibly getting held up,
and he's like, this is why we did it. Like no one
believes you. I mean someone might believe another beer sometimes you might even believe
you, but I don't believe you, and in your heart of hearts don't
believe you either. It's like when Trump would tweet something and you know it
was just emotional and it was a hilarious tweet. But then like two weeks
later, something happens that would be like his preferred outcome, but it had
absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he tweeted about it. People would
be like, Trump is playing four dy chess. Yes, that's exactly what
was happening in Matt Gates's office. Sometimes maybe Trump did a little bit of
that, And I don't really think that Gates woke up. And it's like
the House Representatives has not had a social conservative Speaker of the House for decades.
We need someone who came out boldly against Laurence v. Texas. And
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important thing and it highlights a serious problem in the GP. The GP's had
for decades where these guys get it backseat, and especially since I initiate,
you break these guys read the polls, they read who's the exit polls,
they read who's voting for the Republican Party, and they're not often as the
college educated. They've gone more and more towards the Democratic Party. The high
earners have gone more and more towards the Democratic Party. The people with advanced
degrees have gotten really strongly towards the Democratic Party. So when you do a
lot of these tax cuts, I know you say, like the rising tide
lifts all ships, they just don't really personally impact a lot of the voters
who are coming out for the Republican Party. What else is driving them?
And kind of a what Tucker talked about at the Daily Car News Foundation Gaiah
the day. You know, people who want to leave a country for their
children that kind of looks somewhat like the country that they grew up in is
a large part of that group. Social conservatives fall strongly into that. And
for Republicans have known, you know, take a look at mtt Romney.
They've known that if you don't get these voters to show up, you lose,
but that's never translated into a winning coach, into them getting the right
seat at the table. And this was a mistake the Democrats made because people
forget this. But the moral what became the Moral Majority, was originally activated
as a political force for the first time in modern American history by Jimmy Carter,
Baptist moral Man for all of his other political failings and such, to
someone who he represented them, and they came out and they were very politically
active for him, and he rewarded them with Squad Diddley Squad. But they
were at this point already active, and Reagan was like, come on my
ship, we'll do this, and that's how it ended up becoming this much.
There's also a lot of the leaders wanted this, but that's one of
the things that swayed this whole group to the right. And now for the
decades, a lot of them haven't realized this, but they've been homeless.
The Republicans don't care, don't want to talk about it. The Democrats hate
them, so they definitely can't go there, all right, And because of
that, they get kind of treated get they get treated honestly worse than the
Democratic Party treats the black cock black voters where it's like, yeah, where
you're going to go, right, well, yeah, go vote for the
other guy. Absolutely they won't. So they take them for granted and they
give them like, yeah, yeah, you can have a vice presidency,
I guess, but they don't really take them very seriously and they don't take
their needs that things are actually helped the versus and the same it's true for
the GP with social content. So this might not shift overnight. I mean,
as we've seen, the Speaker of the House is not a very powerful
position. Well, it may also be a kiss of death for somebody like
Mike Johnson, who, by the way, I do not know Mike Johnson
personally. I don't think I've ever talked to Mike Johnson. Sarah's interviewed him
a bunch of times. I've met him briefly. So the reason I say
that is the Speaker of the House position. You know, when Paul Ryan
took over, he was in fairly good standing with the right flank. People
distrusted him, but they could talk to him, they could have conversations with
him, and you know, it became and it became so toxic so quickly.
People were able to talk to him because he was just a breath of
fresh air, it seemed after John Painter, right well, who didn't talk
to you, Yes, you didn't like you. And and Kevin McCarthy,
of course, famously we've covered this, like probably too much here had a
great relationship with the Freedom Caucus, and that in and of itself kind of
ended up splitting the Freedom Caucus into the kind of Marjorie Taylor Green camp and
then the Gates camp on the issue of McCarthy and the speakership. But Chris
does Mike Johnson. I mean, I think first of all, people should,
especially people that are favorable to Mike Johnson. You're gonna have to give
the man some grace. And I hope he is conveying that to people right
now that like, you cannot be Speaker of the House and not talk to
the Centrists. You have to to I mean the sense you help put in
there, Scalise is going to be, you know, at one point an
ally to him, but also someone who could exercise undue control or influence over
him. His fundraising is I mean, anyone who's got speaker next to his
name's got a good fundraising game. But he's obviously going to be pretty new
to this. It's some people are worried that he's already decided to take on
Kevin McCarthy's fundraiser. I don't know how worrying that is, because I don't
know. I've worked with a lot of development people and generally speaking, they
don't run the policy side of things, and Kevin McCarthy's funders are raised a
lot of money, and that's one of the things that John McCarthy. Yeah,
the question is like how much of McCarthy's staff he's going to keep,
because staff do you run a lot of things. How much a lot of
members are to the right of their staff in the GOP, and staff really
guide them and move them back. It's very common to see manipulation from staff
to soften the Republicans politicians position significantly more likely than it is and I've seen
it and it's great when you see it, see staff dragging someone to the
right. And I feel like that's actually been happening more often over the last
several years because of the work of some of the folks like CPI have been
doing a Conservative Partnership Institute have been doing to try and get good staff in
there. You're paid to say that, never a dime. I'm paid in
veer and sandwiches. That's is that not your currency? That magazine for Young
Americans for Freedom on that current, Yeah, that's a powerful compensation for you.
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or your favorite podcast provider. So there actually is something really immediately important about
Mike Johnson's speakership, which is that they have so little time to fund the
government and they have Ukraine funding. It's got a disaster looming right right here,
and the motion to vacate is right there. So there's still the one
person motion of vakate. It looks like the handshake agreement was the unless you've
heard something differently. Basically, what I've heard is and I think it's the
same thing you've heard that it was a handshake agreement on the vote that basically
the same rules package that McCarthy agreed to back in January was on the table
with Mike Johnson, meaning the motion of a kate is still just related to
one member, which is what it was before Pelosi changed it, although it
had never really been used that way before Matt Gates did it. And they
have to fund the government. They don't want to do online buses. There's
Ukraine funding that the Republican base does not want to see. Mike Johnson opened
up the door to a slush fund or negotiate with Johnson a skeptical of it,
yes, And this is I think this is why you see Bill Crystal
freaking out yesterday. Who cares? Yeah, who is Billy Crystal cares about
Ukraine? And that's why I care about Bill Crystal. But Bill Crystal cares
about you. This is why he's because Mike Johnson has signaled that he's skeptical
of the Ukraine funding. So you saw some neo cons yesterday just losing their
minds over Mike Johnson. In addition to the atheists losing their minds over Mike
Johnson, the people who think that the government should have a god, and
that god is atheism, a hole in the soul just on top of a
pyramid, and he's going to come under attack. And you've seen that immediately.
I mean, John Ward had this peace out. I don't know it
was Business Inside or Yahoo or something to CNN saying that I think it was
Yaho actually as d ORCS saying that this is a persecutor of sexual minorities,
which is just a really weird phrase us since since sex is a choice,
but every everywhere you went, which is that Mike Johnson is now under fire
for essentially saying that home's actually something that you do, or racist something that
you is, but something that you are, something that you Yeah, there's
a big split that people don't want to talk about anymore. Because the marriage
fight is supposedly over over whether or not you're born that way. They just
repeat it over and over again, just like love is love and you're expected
to agree. Boys, girl, girls, boy born this way, Love
is love, repeat after me. He didn't buy that, but all of
his One of the reasons why the Republicans have so thoroughly fled the field on
social conservative values is because it is a hard fight That's why people who just
have it as like a like, yeah, I'm socially conservative, right,
don't ever actually get anything done in that because it has to be really central
for you to be willing to take all those arrows. If you care more
about stopping campaign financial reform, or lowering corporate taxes and regulation, or getting
money to fund American defense, then you don't have time to take on this
massive battle for the soul of America and the foundation of our republic. It's
just strong families and maybe skipping on the human sacrifice and things like that.
So the media taxes viciously, I mean within minutes, because I'm sure they've
been writing them all day since he showed up. Minutes of Johnson becoming elected
speaker, the articles came out, and there was not a single one of
them that said the frame that as Mike Johnson is someone who believes that his
Christian value should reform his policy. They were all like, Mike Johnson is
an anti gay bigot who will take away. One of them says Mike Johnson's
pro life. They're all saying Mike Johnson is anti abortion. There's not one
of them that says Mike Johnson wonders why we should re sending Actually, one
of them, John Wortsbez, wonders why we should send one hundred million dollars
to a foreign government when our own country is so clearly billion in distress.
Billion. Yeah, is so clearly in distress. They're all like, he's
skeptical. He just doesn't he doesn't want to fund Ukraine. It's like they're
all framed in the negative. Republicans are used to that, but it's going
to be an absolute pileon on Republican members for this. And I hope that
he's willing to get through that. And I hope that he doesn't have a
lot of experience in leadership none, which is probably why he was elected.
I hope that he's able to have a successful tenure because this is the first
seat at the table that people represent what the base really cares about have had,
or a good section of the base cares about, have had in decades.
Yeah. I mean, I think two things can be true at once.
One is that there's been disproportionate energy devoted to this speaker question in the
media, like they were so hysterical of the fact that the House didn't have
a speaker for three weeks and even Republicans the obsession with who's holding the speakership.
I think there's been some disproportionate attention devoted to that over the last six
months, even though it has been an interesting proxy battle over the sort of
establishment with some different layers. You know, where are where's Thomas Massey falling
in this? All of that At the same time, well, I mean
in terms of like how the Freedom Caucus itself ended up splitting over McCarthy like
those another speaker candidates, is actually pretty interesting at the same time, you
know, as disproportionate as that was, the Speaker does have power and they
do need to, you know, figure out what they're funding. By the
end of the year. There is a shutdown on the line, and you
know, I don't think either of us is going to freak out hysterically if
the government shuts down, but you know, there are political consequences to that,
and there are political questions that need to be answered about what we're funding,
when we're funding it, how much we're funding it too. So Biden
is right now shopping around this one hundred billion dollar aid package. It's a
joint package to Israel in Ukraine. If you want to fund Ukraine, you
have to fund Israel. If you want to fund Israeli, you have to
find you It's about one war. We've always been at war of that which
is yes, which is that one hundred billion dollars sixty sixty one billion of
it would go to Ukraine. And so that's why when Mike Johnson steps in,
I have some quotes from him. He has an f from Republicans for
Ukraine, which is like the weird nums rackt. He've said, Yeah,
we should not be sending another forty billion dollars a broad when our own border
is in chaos, American mothers are struggling to find baby formula, gas prices
are at record highs, and American families are struggling to make ends meet without
sufficient oversight where the money will go. He said that back in May.
In February, he said, American taxpayers have sent over one hundred billion dollars
an aid to Ukraine in the last year. They deserve to know if the
Ukrainian government is being entirely forthcoming and transparent about the use of this massive sum
of taxpayer resources. So he's now the chief negotiator on behalf of the Republican
Party in terms of government funding. And that's going to be a that is
what this city is going to be obsessed with, and it is the work
of the city over the next couple of months, the next two months.
And he, you know, is going to be in a position with immense
pressure from the base, but immense pressure from k Street, immense pressure.
What if one of the establishment Republicans uses the motion of vacate to get rid
of Mike Johnson because he doesn't want to fund Ukraine, because it's the most
important thing in the world. So something that's definitely possible. I mean,
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the Republicans negotiating with Macarthury to put that back in, Like, come on,
put the gun on the table. The gun's been on the table for
one hundred years, no one's used it, just put it back, and
then they used it, and now they put its like all right, put
it back again, and but now it's just kind of these things have a
habit of repeating themselves. It would not shock me if the speakership of Johnson's
speakership is short and ugly. Yeah, I agree, But since so little
things actually make me happy that I read in the news these days, I'm
still just going to ride this way for a second. You know what take
away, You know, if if what percent of the country can have a
voice as the Speaker of the House for a couple of months in Mike Johnson,
like people who are actual probably thirty percent of the country, like actual
conservatives, you know, anti woke and Christian, and you know, a
group of people that legitimately does not have much voice in media, even though
the left things that they do. I'm telling you, like there actually aren't.
If you're traveling through the green rooms of Washington, DC and New York
City, there aren't a lot of people that were super happy when the Dobbs
decision came down. It's wildly out of whack with the proportion of the country
that was happy when the Dobbs decision came down. There aren't a lot of
people who are genuinely like social conservatives. There are people who might sometimes talk
about social conservatism, but don't have any principled stands on social years ago,
I was on the set with a lot of the people that you will see
on these shows now attacking that Republicans watch, attacking the woke stuff in this
on campus. And I just have a memory that's a little longer than a
few months. So I remember five years ago, four years ago, being
on set with these same people. Well, they're like, I've got my
June Pride bracelet on. Yeah, I've got this. I mean, it's
only been two years since the RNC decided to celebrate I mean, granted,
I get it, like half of the and SEE staff are gay, but
decided to celebrate Pride month. I understand they're just trying to make the staff
happy, but that's not the support structure of your voter. Your voter.
Your job is to be the party, not like you want to have like
a litle staff party, fine, but like you represent the party when you're
talking publicly. And to their credit, they reverse course and didn't do that
again. But uh yeah, DC and much of conservative media are not on
the side of where the voters are. I mean, I would there's probably
not a lot of people over at the Daily Wire who think that way,
at least in the public spots, that the social conservatism is just atrophied.
And in my opinion, you and I have talked about this a lot offline.
It is a seriously missing part of the Republican coalition. A reason why
we always seem to be losing is because it's been given away the vote.
It's a problem that the Republican leadership's main concern to deregulation, lower taxes in
the war. And and because that, you see that the foundation of this
country breaking. And you know, there was some article I saw from a
let's call himself k file and skin. Yeah, he came over to my
house once as a guest of Benny when he was at BuzzFeed. It was
like, so just I didn't I didn't like the guy. I've never met
him. Vegetarian, I was growing, I don't eat meat. Betty should
have no better. But Buz he was out there being like my dogs are
pushes a crazy idea that that legalizing gay marriage is a slippery slope. It's
like, no kidding, and you can you cannot argue that it is not
anymore. You just leaders lying where and this don't say the unil children in
the name of science Obergerfeld, twenty fifteen. That happens by what twenty seventeen,
The don't Say Gay Bill should be called the don't talk about your sex
life to nine year old's bill. They don't say gaybill that he brought nationally
the floor of a national version of the Florida One should be called the taxpayer
money shouldn't go towards drag Queen Story Hour. But it's so, it's so
infiltrated the culture, this left wing insanity that I mean nowadays, this week
I see Notre Dame, an ostensibly Catholic school, arguing that it hosting a
drag queen story Hour is academic freedom. So I think we might maybe disagree
on that, But these are our humiliation exercises for the American people. It's
rituals to humiliate us. When when when a Catholic university says it's academic freedom
to have drag queens that they're they're they're telling you, I think you're stupid
and not worth responding to. And when Republicans and Democrats in the media say
they say the same thing, it's just they humiliate you. And I think
it's that missing part of the coalition has a huge part of why Republicans,
even when they win elections, fail to change the country. The Watch Dot
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like, I love that people on the left listen to this. And we
would probably disagree about what level voice that social conservatives have in DC. But
seriously, as both of us have like run in these circles for long enough
to realize that even when people say they support X, Y and Z,
a whole lot of them don't and this country is not broadly socially conservative anymore.
It may have been years ago, and we understand that, but that
is a hugely important part of the Republican Party, that a huge amount of
the constituents of the people who are supposed to represent their voters are in that
camp, and that is not a camp that has a serious, sincere voice
in political leadership. And the Washington College social conservatism, they called it Christian
values and then you people, and actually Jefferson was a bast Okay, yeah,
they called it the republicanism, smaller Republicanism. Yeah right. They like
to cite Jefferson and Franklin as proof that the founders were not devoutly Christian men
without Christian and it's just like, name me a third, name me a
third of that group. They can't. And even Jefferson wrote that we need
to spread schools throughout the country for the spreading of Christian values and virtues so
that this republic can survive. Even he understood intellectually the necessity for these values
to be part of the American fabric in order for the American people to live
freely in without tyranny, to live to be able to operate a representative government
that doesn't fall into tyranny, requires virtue, and it's really just taking a
backseat. And it's a it's a damn shame. Sure is well, it's
Mike Johnson's moment and probably the biggest challenges to him holding fast his values.
We'll come from other Republicans, as we will know, but Mike Johnson,
good luck to you. Chris rere late for lunch, got speed. You've
been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. Emily Dashinsky, culture
editor here at the Federalist. We will be back soon with more. Until
then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the friend