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.”
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