Sure, maybe it’s not that kind of thing — maybe it’s not if you’re not worried about reelection — but I digress.
What’s interesting about Johnson’s statement is that it’s exactly the same position as Donald Trump’s. This isn’t surprising, given what we understand about Trump’s pervasive influence within his party — after all, the Speaker of the House, who was elected to the House in the election that made Trump president, is speaking to Trump’s former press secretary. But it’s notable that the heads of half of the agencies that act as checks on presidential power agree with the judiciary that it should have more power than the Constitution provides.
Johnson and his position, made possible by a backlash against his predecessor from the far right wing of the House Republican Conference, is a reminder of how much Congress has changed since Trump took office.
An analysis of the makeup of the House and Senate shows that most Democrats held their positions before the 2016 election, even though Democrats benefited greatly from voter backlash against Trump in the 2018 wave election.
But most Republicans in the Senate or House of Representatives rear Following that election, 53% of Democrats (and Senate Independents who are aligned with the Democrats) were sworn in before November 8, 2016. 58% of Republicans were sworn in after that election.
There are also ideological differences. Using DW-NOMINATE estimates of how liberal or conservative lawmakers are (compiled by Voteview), we find that Democrats who took office before the 2016 election had an average ideology score of -0.39 (with -1 being the most liberal and 1 being the most conservative). Lawmakers who took office after the election had an average score of -0.36, meaning they are slightly more moderate than Democrats who have been in office longer.
Republicans are different. Those who took office before November 8, 2016 have an average score of 0.49, which is more extreme than the overall Democratic average (closer to 1 because Democrats’ scores are closer to minus 1). Those who took office after the 2016 election have an average score of 0.53. All 16 of the most conservative members of the House Republican Conference joined the House after that election.
To some extent, this is self-fulfilling: The ideology score is based on votes, and new members are getting more votes that reflect conservative values, as measured by Voteview. But the shift to the right is still discernible. The average DW-NOMINATE score for the House Republican Conference in the Congress that ended in January 2017 was 0.48. The current conference average is 0.51.
Since 2016, there has been a noticeable shift in the electorate. Believe it or not, kids who were 10 years old when Trump was first elected are now old enough to vote. They have only ever known a political world where Trump was the Republican Party standard.
This thinking also applies to Congress: Most Republicans on Capitol Hill only know what Congress looks like and how it works in the Trump era, and their expectations are inevitably different from those of lawmakers who served in previous decades.
Their assumptions about what constitutes “insane criminal behavior” may differ somewhat from those of other lawmakers and the American public at large.
