Reviews | The race for the worst GOP senator on the ballot has already been won

In a powerful new ad campaign airing on Wisconsin airwaves this week, George Silverwood, a retired police captain, says, “I will never forget January 6 watching my fellow police officers defend the Capitol. And then five officers died. Then, speaking of the Republican senator incumbent in the November ballot, an impassioned Silverwood said, “But Ron Johnson makes excuses for the rioters who tried to overthrow our government, even calling them ‘peaceful protests.’

Indeed, Johnson, who is locked in a close race with his Democratic opponent, Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, has advanced former President Donald Trump’s election lies in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack. , then downplayed the insurrection as a “peaceful protest”. disturbed by a few “agitators”. That’s just one of the many reasons Johnson is, in a word, awful. There are 15 Republican senators up for re-election, and Johnson is by far the worst of them. That says a lot considering that Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida are on their states’ ballots.

All the disgusting things the GOP said or did, Johnson said or did. As noted in a new announcement released this week by Barnes, Johnson supports banning abortion even in cases of rape and jailing doctors who perform abortions. He says women who don’t like Republicans imposing their extreme religious beliefs as law and denying women reproductive freedom “can move” to another state.

What about Republican bigotry? Johnson said he had no fear during the insurgency because he knew the attackers supporting Trump “are people who love this country, who really respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law”. But, he said, if the attackers “were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter…protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”

To find? Those unleashing domestic terrorism in Trump’s name are not alarming, but black people demanding their lives be seen as precious are inherently a threat.

Such bigotry also explains ads for Johnson that attack Barnes, a black man, as soft on crime. These ads cast black people as suspects and even darkened Barnes’ face to make him even scarier for racists. Johnson declined to speak out against ads placed by organizations supporting him. And why would he? He knows it’s the type of rancid red meat that drives GOP voters. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, also gets it, as made clear by racist comments linking black Americans to crime he spewed at a campaign rally.

But back to how bad Johnson is. He played down the risk of Covid and spoke out against vaccines. He falsely claimed in December that gargling “standard” mouthwash has been proven to “kill the coronavirus”. And in January, he told listeners to a conservative radio show that vaccines were killing athletes on the pitch – another lie.

Truth and Johnson don’t go together. Civility and Johnson neither. When the Barnes-Johnson debate moderators asked each candidate to name one thing they admired about the other, Barnes said it was “admirable” that Johnson was a family man. In response, Johnson said Barnes had “loving parents”. Then he said, “I guess what baffles me with this, with this upbringing, why did it turn against America?” The crowd rightfully started booing, but Johnson knows what GOP voters like, and portraying a black man as un-American is one of those things. Trump’s lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States is an enduring example of this.

Johnson went further than some other Republicans in one way: He called for an end to Social Security and Medicare as we know them. While Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican who chairs the Republican National Senate Committee, has proposed that Congress decide every five years whether these lifelines for older Americans should continue, Johnson wants them on the potential chopping block every year. Since the GOP sees government as the problem, adopting Johnson’s idea would most likely mean that the more than 60 million Americans who rely on Social Security and Medicare would see their benefits cut or terminate.

And for good or bad, Johnson said in March that the Affordable Care Act would have to be repealed if Republicans regain power in Washington. That would mean the 35 million Americans who got coverage through the ACA would lose it. It would also mean an end to mandates that health insurance policies cover pre-existing health conditions without charging higher premiums. Johnson’s call for an end to the ACA should scare anyone with underlying medical conditions because if he succeeds we will be back to the pre-ACA days of insurers charging outrageous rates to those with conditions pre-existing conditions or denying them coverage altogether.

Despite all that, Johnson, the millionaire who supports ending the federal minimum wage, is neck and neck with Barnes and even leads in some polls. Will the bigotry and lies of the GOP prevail, or will Wisconsin voters follow their state motto and move on?