House Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments before and after Biden’s announcement are instructive.
Johnson claimed on Sunday morning that replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee would be “unlawful” and suggested Republicans would litigate to keep him on the ballot if the party tried to replace him.
“I think they would run into some legal impediments in at least a few of these jurisdictions,” he said on ABC’s This Week. “I think there’ll be a compelling case to be made that that shouldn’t happen, and so I think they’ve got legal trouble. If that’s their intention, and that’s their plan. So we’ll see how it plays out.”
The argument that Democrats can’t legally choose their own nominee at the party’s convention next month don’t deserve “any credence,” according to election expert Rick Hansen: “Joe Biden is not the party’s nominee now, and states generally point to the major party’s nominee as the one whose name is on the ballot.”
But in any case, Johnson’s argument that Republicans will sue to keep Biden on the ballot logically conflicts with his argument after Biden said he was dropping out.
On Sunday afternoon, Johnson said: “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately.”
(Johnson, a key figure in Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021, also now claims the Democrats “invalidated” Biden’s primary voters in an affront to the democratic process.)
So Republicans are going to sue to keep Biden on the ballot to serve as president for four more years while simultaneously claiming that he should resign his office? That’s totally incoherent, a signal of obvious political desperation.
The right’s leaders have benefited at times from the low standards the news media sets for them. But Republicans are telegraphing that the coming days will feature an avalanche of bad faith nonsense — and that’s how reporters should treat their arguments.
The Saga of Crooked Donald 