“Ron Johnson” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Wisconsin’s senior senator, Ron Johnson, has become a topic of national interest. As here at FREE WHITEWATER, Americans from fawaway parts of the continent have noticed his extreme positions.
Johnson, in opposition to a COVID and stimulus bill heading from the House to the Senate, insists that he will demand the lengthy bill be read aloud. Laura Schulte reports Ron Johnson pledges to slow down passage of stimulus bill with out-loud reading of 700-page document:
The Oshkosh Republican on Wednesday afternoon promised to force a full reading of the bill while speaking on The Vicki McKenna Show. He said that reading the entirety of the document would likely take up to 10 hours.
“I will make them read their 600- to 700-page bill,” he said on the radio program. “So that every member of the Senate would have time to read it … before we start the debate on it.”
As a matter of sheer obstinacy, this tactic makes sense. As general advocacy (toward all Wisconsin) it doesn’t make sense: merely reading the entire bill won’t highlight bloated parts as effectively as using time in the Senate and in the media to repeat over and again the specific parts of the bill that Johnson thinks are bloated. Johnson isn’t taking ten hours – he’s wasting ten hours on a stunt. He’d do better to take ten minutes, repeated again and again in the media, to highlight parts of the bill to which he objects.
There are explanations for Johnson’s position apart from general advocacy: he’s ambitious in a particular way (winning over a WISGOP primary audience), he’s compromised, or he’s a crackpot. See Whether Ambitious, Compromised, or Crackpot, Sen. Ron Johnson Doesn’t Disappoint and Ron Johnson: ‘No Enemies to the Right’?
He could, easily, be ambitious, compromised, and a crackpot at the same time.
If this should be (at least in part) the performance of an ambitious man, to whom is Johnson’s performance directed? WISGOP primary voters, the donor class, or Trump?
Johnson is ostentatiously extreme. He’s become a United-States-senator-as-troll. A would-be troll king, truly, competing with Cruz, Graham, Paul.
And so, and so, one wonders: For whom is Johnson performing?