GOP Senator Ron Johnson goes off the deep end

| 4:00 pm EST February 4, 2021
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For decades, Republicans have ranted about a “liberal media” that mischaracterizes their views and makes them look evil and incompetent, and if it weren’t for that, they’d be far more popular and win elections the fair way. This is of course, false, bordering on conspiracy theory nonsense. The majority of newspapers and news stations in the country aren’t all that liberal. If anything, they veer towards “both sides-ism” in the worst way, acting as if both parties have responsible adults interested in governing, and if Republicans behave outrageously, there’s probably a good reason for it.

This sort of approach has won them basically no new Republican consumers, who are now getting all their news from Fox or OAN, while also splitting Democratic coalitions by creating scandals with Democratic candidates where there aren’t any. Now, the GOP has decided to stretch the narrative further – that it’s not just pundits and reporters out to get them, but also big technology in general, which is why Ron Johnson feels compelled to accuse YouTube of censorship because they flagged some videos from when he held a senate hearing in December to promote hydroxychloroquine. Of course, in the fashion of all of these Republicans who pretend they’re being censored, he made his grievances known in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

With this commentary, Johnson highlighted the two biggest problems the modern GOP stands for: proud ignorance (as his op-ed suggests that YouTube moderating inaccurate content on its own website is government-sponsored censorship), and quackery that’s outright dangerous – since he feels he should be able to grift people just as relentlessly as the guy who used to be in charge of his party. He needs to be shown the door in 2022.