Cheney spoke out on Tuesday about colleagues who tolerate the violent rhetoric that increasingly characterizes their party but condemn lawmakers who vote for programs that they think benefit their districts — even though she personally did not support the infrastructure bill: “The notion that Leader (Kevin) McCarthy won’t full on condemn what Paul Gosar did on multiple occasions, but that he seems to be entertaining this move to push the 13 off of their committees, I mean, it’s indefensible — morally and ethically — and it’s crazy politically.”
McCarthy said Gosar didn’t mean to promote violence. But contrary to Cheney’s claim, he also argued it was not the right time to go after Republicans who supported the infrastructure bill. Still, the idea that a staunch conservative like Cheney is being ostracized by her own party shows how far the GOP has moved from its ideological roots toward undiluted Trumpism.
A long term, anti-democratic trend
This fresh evidence of the GOP’s increasingly extreme path is just the product of a few days. But it follows months in which the party has covered up Trump’s attempt to steal power and supported his lies about a stolen election as part of its countrywide move toward authoritarian conservatism. At the state level, Republicans have tried to make it harder to vote in elections but easier to fix the results. And this week’s ruckus inside the House GOP also coincided with anti-democratic fervor growing outside it, as Trump’s populist political Machiavel Steve Bannon vowed to bring down the Biden “regime” after he was indicted for criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to testify on the attempted Trump coup.
And in another another example of American democracy in peril, it’s possible Republicans could gain the seats they need to win the majority next year simply through partisan gerrymandering — a practice both parties engage in but with which Republicans have had more recent success. Years of gerrymandering by both parties have produced a House in which there are few competitive seats and in which members are driven to extremes to avoid primary challenges by more radical foes. While the Democratic Party’s radicalization tends to push it toward a more progressive democracy, the same process in the GOP has turned the party of Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln against democracy itself. That fact threatens to deny the country the healthy two-party system that has long been a hallmark of its superpower strength.
Greene warns McCarthy he’s not a shoo-in for speaker
If McCarthy fulfills his dream of becoming speaker, his riotous conference might make the struggles of ex-GOP Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan to control their radical wings look tame by comparison.
Neither man had to deal with someone like freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said McCarthy was “a failure” on Wednesday despite his constant appeasement of Trump. Angry that the California Republican hasn’t stripped Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill of their committee assignments, Greene warned that McCarthy isn’t a shoo-in for the speakership by saying Trump’s opinion is going to “matter big” in who gets the gavel if the GOP wins. The sharp rebuke was a sign that McCarthy must constantly appease the vast Trump wing of his party to secure his own political ambitions — a factor that saw him quickly visit Mar-a-Lago this year in a bid to walk back his previous criticism of Trump over the insurrection.
The turmoil wracking the GOP House minority this week is yet another reflection of the iron fist that Trump wields over his party — and especially in the House, which traditionally showcases the radicalism of a party’s grassroots.
The reason why Republicans are standing by Gosar is that he is one of Trump’s most vehement defenders and accomplices in attacking democracy. The reason why 13 supporters of the popular infrastructure bill are in trouble is that their votes helped hand Biden a win on an issue on which Trump manifestly failed, creating an embarrassing comparison with his presidency. And the reason that Cheney, one of the most consistently conservative members of the conference, was declared persona non grata by the Wyoming GOP is that she had the courage to stand against Trump’s authoritarianism.
Scenes of a Trump-led Republican revolution, which is already threatening party members who reject the GOP’s ever more extreme dogmas, are all the more extraordinary since that kind of extremism could up alienating some general election voters in more competitive districts.
This week’s outbursts have also drowned out an effective midterm election message that McCarthy was pushing for months about Biden’s presidency failing — on the economy, on the pandemic, on the border and abroad.
The evidence of a party that has embraced self-radicalization is dismaying former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who, many years ago, was considered something of a conservative firebrand himself as a young GOP congressman.
“It’s completely crazy,” Kasich said on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” bemoaning his party’s failure to rein in Gosar. “The Republicans are lucky the people aren’t following this thing carefully. If they did, their ability to take over the House, in my opinion, would be in question. People don’t support this kind of nonsense; they don’t.”
CNN’s Melanie Zanona contributed to this story.
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