Here’s Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson spending a few more of the remaining seconds of his career doing nothing at all for his constituents, per usual. What he’s bitching about doesn’t really matter, he might as well be singing Gangnam Style to the camera for all I care.
One mini-soundbite that sticks out however is the mention of “74 million Americans who voted supported and voted for President Trump” who apparently are very special to Senator Johnson. We hear that get tossed around a lot by Republicans like it’s supposed to have some sort of significance to us. The actual number is 74,216,154. Sometimes they round up to 75 million, because MAGA Republicans are assholes. Anyway, when we see Josh Hawley saying “74 million Americans are not going to be told their voices don’t matter” a week before he encouraged the Capitol riot and Newt Gingrich writing “Internet Giants Can’t Send 74 Million Americans Down a ‘Memory Hole’” in the aftermath, it seems like they’re trying to say this imposing bloc is supposed to have more clout than the other 260 million or so Americans, or even the 81 million that voted for Biden instead of Trump. Or something. I’m not sure what the message is supposed to be.
They’re not any more entitled to have their “voices heard” than they were during the election, which is now over and their guy lost. The GOP certainly didn’t care about the voices of Americans that poll after poll after poll confirm the majorities of Americans support legal marijuana, a public option for healthcare, immigration reform, background checks for gun purchases, and banning Trump from running for office again, just to name a few issues that the Republican Party regularly tells the American public to go fuck themselves on. It’s possible that the GOP doesn’t have any better ideas than fighting the last war, and desperately clinging to 74 million voters, a sizable number of whom – despite being ostensibly “Republican” – would definitely, and without any hesitation whatsoever, stab Ron Johnson to death with a sheetrock knife for not doing more to keep Trump in office (if given the chance) is the best they have going for them right now.