{"id":56966,"date":"2024-04-21T20:31:19","date_gmt":"2024-04-21T20:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=56966"},"modified":"2024-04-21T20:31:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T20:31:19","slug":"speaker-does-his-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=56966","title":{"rendered":"Speaker does his job"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I<em>n the Republican Party of 2024, styled in the image of former President Donald J. Trump, a norm-preserving, consensus-driven act \u2014 even a basic one \u2014 can be a career-ending offense.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So wrote the subhead on a story in the New York Times about the decision by House Speaker Mike Johnson to proceed with a vote to give Ukraine billions of dollars in military aid.<\/p>\n<p>I am of mixed feelings about Mike Johnson. He is far from my idea of a perfect House speaker, yet I do not want to see him torpedoed by the MAGA cult that comprises the most vocal caucus within the House GOP conference.<\/p>\n<p>The MAGAites don&#8217;t want to assist Ukraine in its fight for survival against the Russian army invaders. They are beholden to Vladimir Putin, the ham-fisted strongman who pretends to be a BFF of the 45th POTUS. The reality appears to be that while POTUS No. 45 admires Putin, his &#8220;good buddy&#8221; actually loathes him and sees him as a useful idiot.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/1ft.io\/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F04%2F20%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fjohnson-pence-republicans-ukraine-aid.html\">Mike Johnson, Like Pence, Does What Passes for Brave in Today\u2019s GOP: His Job &#8211; The New York Times (1ft.io)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Well, thanks in part to the speaker&#8217;s insistence on doing the right thing and standing tall for democracy, Ukraine is going to get more needed aid from Congress as it seeks to fend off the immoral invasion by Russia.<\/p>\n<p>A large part of me doesn&#8217;t want to see Mike Johnson torpedoed because he stood up for democracy.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Republican Party of 2024, styled in the image of former President Donald J. Trump, a norm-preserving, consensus-driven act \u2014 even a basic one \u2014 can be a career-ending offense. So wrote the subhead on a story in the New York Times about the decision by House Speaker Mike Johnson to proceed with a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=56966\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Speaker does his job<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7419,10290,7018,9899],"class_list":["post-56966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","tag-maga","tag-mike-johnson","tag-putin","tag-ukraine-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56967,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56966\/revisions\/56967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}