Johnson: Don’t Believe the Hype; Americans See Harris as the ‘Common Denominator’ for Their Problems

The summer hasn’t been a relaxing one for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). With Republicans desperately fighting to keep and expand their majority, August has been less of a recess and more of a sprint. From the car, where he’s spent most of the month, the Louisianan said he’d been to 20 states this month alone campaigning with his party’s candidates. “And I tell you what,” he said, “I don’t really think this Democratic National Convention is going to have much of an impact at all on our chances of growing the House majority.”

The speaker’s optimism comes in part from the shockingly leftist platform draft released by Kamala Harris’s party. Clocking in at 80 pages, the Democrats’ document is five times longer than the “streamlined” GOP version and easily five times more radical. To Johnson, Harris’s party is finally “saying the quiet parts out loud.” In other words, Democrats are openly broadcasting the unpopular extremism that they’ve tried for so many years to hide. “I mean, if we compared the party platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties decades ago, 40 years ago,” he told Family Research President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill,” maybe there wouldn’t have been that much difference. Both parties had the same ideals in mind. They wanted what was best for America. They wanted to preserve the Republic.”

Of course, the Democrats “generally wanted a lot more government involvement in our lives, and Republicans wanted less,” Johnson acknowledged, “but that was really the crux of the disagreement. Now, however, there is a wide chasm that’s developed between the two parties.” On the Republican side, he insisted, there are the “founding principles,” values like “individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, [and] human dignity. We believe all of us are made by our Creator and given our rights by him, and so every life has value. Those are principles that used to define all of us, all Americans. But now, if you talk about those founding principles in a room full of progressives, socialist Democrats, they snarl at you. They have disdain for those principles. They want to trade them in.”

This platform, the speaker believes, will reveal an agenda that is “directly the opposite” of what most Americans are fighting to defend and preserve.

Perkins, who made no secret of his frustration over the Republican Party Platform’s watered-down language as a delegate, pointed out that what Donald Trump’s camp decided to deemphasize is exactly what the Democratic Party is emphasizing. “I mean, they’re talking about abortion. They’re talking about the whole transgender push for children — all the things that really are on the minds of many Americans, especially conservative voters. Republicans are going to have to address those issues.”

His fellow Louisianan agreed, pointing to several conversations he’s had in towns across America where people are “very concerned” about transgenderism, for example. “It’s a top issue,” Johnson insisted. “They don’t want men competing in women’s sports. They don’t want as [Tim] Walz infamously did in his state, they don’t want tampons put in the boys’ bathrooms and all the rest. That really does resonate with people. All of these issues really are still very important.”

But as important as it is for Republicans to raise these issues, it’s just as crucial to understand how to talk about them. “We can be passionate,” the House leader said, “but at the same time respect people that we disagree with. … In fact, we’re supposed to have compassion for the people who don’t understand the truth. That’s kind of the whole principle of evangelism. And when you’re sharing the truth, the eternal truth, or the truth about these temporal policies, you’ve got to do it in the right way. We’re supposed to be winsome…”

Unfortunately, he conceded, “[W]e’ve devolved into this society [that’s] toxic. Politics is a blood sport right now. We are [on] the happy warrior side. Our principles are good. [They’re] for human flourishing, and we have to be able to present that in a way that’s compelling, so that people will listen and understand and come along to our way of thinking. … I call on our members, our colleagues, to go out there into the campaign trail and speak with clarity and consistency and with conviction, because we are fighting for the things that matter — that will preserve the republic and help individuals, families, and communities.”

And right now, the speaker told Perkins, what we see from the Democratic ticket is so completely outside the mainstream that it’s “working [to] our benefit.” Harris is, “quite literally, the most progressive left, the most liberal person to ever run for president [for] any major party. And she has chosen someone who matches her almost exactly. I mean, Tim Walz is a far-leftist. He’s on video in the last couple of years giving sanction to socialism. He thinks it’s a great idea. He says that we ought to have sanctuary cities and that illegal aliens ought to have driver’s licenses. … In his own words, [he] champion[s] radical abortion … with almost no limits at all. I mean, this guy does not line up with the values of the American people. … And I think what Kamala Harris did was cement her legacy as a far-left San Francisco radical.”

She can get away with that for a while, thanks to the loss of all journalistic integrity. As long as the press keeps covering for Harris, her polling honeymoon may continue. “They’re going to try to keep her quiet,” Johnson agreed. “They’re going to try to keep her in a basement. She’ll go to rallies, and she’ll speak from a teleprompter, but she won’t give any difficult interviews — if any at all. And I think if she goes off the teleprompter, they’ll be very nervous about it, because Kamala Harris has shown herself to be a failure in public policy and an empty suit in almost every regard.”

In the meantime, don’t believe all the hype, the speaker warned. As someone who’s crisscrossed the country in the last several weeks, he wants conservatives to know, “There is a real energy out there. It doesn’t always register accurately in the polls, but I’m telling you that people are very animated right now. They are fed up with the situation that they see in the country. They’re fed up with the cost of living. … They’re having a difficult time with the rising crime rates everywhere. And they’re so frustrated about the open border and all the problems that have come from that, and the weakness that we’re projecting on the world stage. They see the common denominator for all of those things as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.” Americans, he added, “are ready for grown-ups to fix these problems.

Until then, his advice to Trump is something he hopes the former president already knows: “This election has to be about policies, not personalities. It has to be about the records of both candidates and not rhetoric. The great thing we have here is an actual comparison. We had a Trump administration. We’ve had a Biden-Harris administration. And there’s not a single American who can say they’re doing better now under this team than they were under the Trump administration. And so, I think that speaks for itself. I think it’s going to give us a remarkable November.”