A few years ago, I interviewed Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson in front of a crowd at one of those infamous conservative conclaves you sometimes hear about. He refused to make eye contact with me or even position his body in my general direction. I would ask him a question, and (instead of answering) he would give an angry speech directly to the audience. I would ask another question, and he would repeat the process. He didn’t even try to hide his contempt for me, and he wasn’t exactly fond of the audience, either.
He had just won a stunning surprise re-election, but rather than showing magnanimity, he oozed anger and bitterness. He had a mountain-sized chip on his shoulder for all the doubters who’d predicted he would lose.
And that’s why it didn’t surprise me to hear about his latest stunt: delaying the COVID relief bill this week by forcing Senate clerks to read all 628 pages aloud. According to NBC News, it took the clerks 10 hours, 43 minutes, and 9 seconds. What a dick.
Don’t get me wrong. Senators should actually read bills. What is more, I suspect there’s probably a lot of waste in this particular one. Heck, like all 49 Republicans in the Senate, I probably wouldn’t even vote for a $1.9 trillion package. As Trump critic Rep. Adam Kinsinger recently said, this “is the single most expensive bill in history. This is reckless and no way to legislate.”
But that’s a separate question. No matter what you think of the bill, forcing someone else to read it out loud (why couldn’t Johnson do it?) will, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “accomplish little more than a few sore throats for the Senate clerks, who work very hard, day in, day out, to help the Senate function.” That’s why it’s hard to see Johnson’s mean-spirited move as anything other than for show. As The Washington Post’s Paul Kane tweeted, after forcing the clerks to read the bill, Johnson “wasn't there to object when Dems reduced debate to 3 hrs (instead of 20). So, now bill is moving faster to passage, not slower. Strategery?”
This is merely the latest example of how Johnson, once considered a conservative Tea Party outsider who counted former Wisconsin talk show host Charlie Sykes (now of the Bulwark) among his friends, has transformed into a performative MAGA kook. Sykes now often refers to “Ronjon” (Johnson’s more lovable nickname) as “RonAnon” (a reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory).
It is a fitting moniker. During a recent Senate hearing, Johnson read an article from the Federalist website that suggested “fake Trump supporters” and left-wing “provocateurs” had provoked the Jan. 6 insurrection, while most of the crowd that rallied for Trump in Washington that day had a “jovial” demeanor. On another occasion, he suggested that Nancy Pelosi was to blame for it. As Brian Williams recently noted, Johnson is “the rare conspiracy theorist who is a regular on Meet the Press.”
In recent years, Johnson has claimed there is a “secret society” in the Justice Department and the FBI, suggested that John McCain’s brain tumor impacted his vote on repealing Obamacare, and pushed back against shutting down the economy because of COVID, noting that “getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population [and] I think probably far less.” He was also quoted as saying his probe of Hunter Biden’s Burisma business dealings in Ukraine “would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection.” And he refused to be clear about who won the 2020 election, telling CNN, “I think there are some real issues that have not been answered and I think these are legitimate concerns about the election.” I could go on.
Johnson wasn’t always this way. Yes, he has always been a crotchety conservative, but he was also known as a reality-based truth-teller. Back in 2013, for example, Johnson (appearing on Sykes’ radio show) called Ted Cruz’s quixotic scheme to defund Obamacare, which ultimately led to a government shutdown, “intellectually dishonest.” Johnson, of course, was right—but that didn’t stop him from being attacked from the right and enduring a heated radio interview with pro-Cruz conservative talker Mark Levin.
But in the years since chastising Cruz, “Ron Johnson has become Wisconsin’s own Ted Cruz," says Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. Maybe he’s one of the many Republicans who simply went crazy when Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Or maybe he just had a better read on the situation. “He’s basically going where the wind is blowing,” said A.B. Stoddard of RealClearPolitics. “His voters are asking for this, and he wants that job.”
Should Johnson seek re-election in 2022, and he told the Hill on Friday that it’s “probably my preference now” not to run, he would once again be perceived as the most vulnerable Republican on the ballot. “I think it’s obvious that I’m target number one here,” Johnson recently told CNN. “People are out to destroy me.”
He’s not wrong. When you spew a steady stream of anger and bitterness, nobody’s going to want you to sit at their political lunch table. In the immortal words of Justin Timberlake, what goes around… comes around.
