If you court arsonists and invite them inside your home, you shouldn’t be surprised when you’re roasting in a bonfire with a garland of marshmallows around your neck.
The GOP and its House leader Kevin McCarthy are currently learning this painful lesson through public humiliation and masochism. After ten rounds of voting, up to 21 extremist members of an increasingly radicalized and violent GOP have decided to flex their power by blocking the nomination of Rep. McCarthy as House Speaker, and preventing the 118th Congress from being sworn in.
Despite granting numerous concessions that debase his own power, McCarthy has been unable to win over these MAGA firebrands, most of whom belong to the House Freedom Caucus. Even though 17 of them were endorsed by Trump, the golden MAGA king’s steadfast support of McCarthy hasn’t been enough to sway these rebels without a cause. This includes gun enthusiast Rep. Lauren Boebert who publicly rebuked Trump’s call to back McCarthy. Even Sean Hannity, the tireless GOP propagandist and Trump’s consigliere, couldn’t sway Boebert during a testy exchange on his Fox News show this week.
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It is evident that these Republican flamethrowers are committed to their extremism—even if it ends in self-immolation for their own party. The cruelty, and the chaos, are the point.
With the voting process moving to Round 11 and beyond, these Republican intransigents have been labeled “terrorists” for holding up Congress. That comment didn’t come from Democrats, who have remained unified and are enjoying the GOP clown show, but was instead unleashed by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX)—a Trump-supporting dyed-in-the-wool right-winger—who echoes many of his colleagues’ frustration.
These Freedom Caucus Republicans are so committed to the chaos that they’ve briefly made Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who fears Jewish Space Lasers, look like a pragmatic politician. Greene, who is backing McCarthy after brokering a deal for more power, accused the GOP defectors of playing “Russian roulette” with the nomination process. I think a Mexican standoff is a much more apt and exquisite analogy, but I digress.
Lauren Boebert delivers remarks in the House Chamber during the third day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 5, 2023, in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee/GettyAccording to a recent New York Times analysis, many of these 21 Republicans want to limit the size and scope of the federal government, dismantle the IRS, get rid of the income tax, beef up border security to stop the caravan of “invaders” (naturally), and make it easier to eliminate federal offices and fire government workers.
Conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist famously quipped in 2001, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Well, these new MAGA Republicans have taken that old Republican dream to a literalist extreme. They’re fine blowing up the bathtub, the bathroom, and the house—and, just to be sure, they’ll even shoot everyone who’s left with an AR-15. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) Texas rationalized his obstructionism on Wednesday when he said, “It’s all about the ability—empowering us to stop the machine in this town from doing what it does.”
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy stands alone as he suffers a 10th consecutive defeat in the 10th round of voting for a new Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., Jan. 5, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersThis is the inevitable result of the GOP’s Faustian bargain with MAGA extremists, racists, and conspiracy theorists whom they nurtured, supported, coddled, and embraced in order to gain short-term political power.
The people’s tax dollars are paying the six-figure salaries of GOP elected officials who want to abuse their power and privilege to annihilate the government and the democratic process, rather than using it to help their constituents. There’s no plan or solution to reduce income inequality, lower the price of prescription drugs, create jobs for the middle class, or help children achieve access to better education. Instead, their primary goal is to impede government, “own the libs,” and manufacture bogeymen to rile up their base for donations, votes, and media hits.
Unsurprisingly, most of these 21 Republican dissidents hail from three states, which are the hub of right-wing radical activism: Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Instead of proposing solutions to combat climate change or prevent COVID-related deaths, Florida Republicans led by Gov. Ron DeSantis have decided to woo the MAGA base by aggressively attacking vaccines, educators, gay people, and teachers for being “groomers,” as well as Disney for being “woke.”
Over in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott and Republicans are competing with their colleagues in Florida to advance the extremist MAGA agenda and galvanize national street cred with conservatives ahead of the 2024 election. Abbott is more comfortable with people having unlicensed guns than heat, energy, and water during national crises. Republicans in both states have no compunctions about wasting taxpayer dollars to kidnap and transport migrants to D.C. for theatrical outrage porn to satiate their base.
Matt Gaetz applauds during the third day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 5, 2023, in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee/GettyMeanwhile, up north in Arizona, Republicans raised massive funds from a fraudulent “audit” of the 2020 election, and now they’re attacking pronouns and remain ground zero for the conservative freakout over critical race theory (CRT) and drag queens. When they’re not trying to ban books, they’re busy palling around with white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes. The really ambitious ones, like Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, also allegedly helped right-wing activists like Ali Alexander plan the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally (though both have denied the accusation).
With that in mind, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the majority of the Republican holdouts have denied the 2020 election results—including Reps. Matt Gaetz and Anna P. Luna of Florida, Reps. Biggs and Gosar of Arizona, Rep. Keith Self of Texas, and Rep. Boebert of Colorado. Fourteen of the 15 incumbents voting against McCarthy also voted to overturn the 2020 Electoral College results. At least three of the 21 Republicans, including Reps. Gaetz, Perry, and Biggs, allegedly asked President Trump for pre-emptive pardons for their role in the coup attempt.
Today, on the second anniversary of the failed Jan. 6 insurrection incited by Trump and his conservative allies, it is worth noting that a majority of Republicans believe in the lie that Trump won the 2020 election. The Republican National Committee has referred to violent insurrectionists as “ordinary citizens” who were engaged in a “legitimate political discourse.” Nearly half of Republican voters now embrace some aspect of the white supremacist great replacement conspiracy theory that has radicalized individuals to commit terrorism against Americans.
The extremism is the feature, not the bug.
Rep. McCarthy and GOP leaders voluntarily sacrificed their spine, dignity, and moral compass to these seditionists, racists, and clowns just to have a chance at power. Even though he knows Trumpism is caustic, dangerous, and violent, McCarthy nonetheless prostrates himself as a pathetic, gelatinous mound of red flesh in front of the star-spangled altar of MAGA made of brass and manufactured in China. The delicious irony is that no matter how much he concedes, begs, and grovels, it’ll never be enough. For the extremists, he isn’t a true believer. He’s an establishment cuck and fraud whose voluntary debasement will leave him as a cautionary tale in the annals of congressional history.
In 2021, McCarthy predicted he’d be the House Speaker and joked that it “will be hard not to hit” departing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once she hands him the gavel. Little did he know that the 21 Republican extremists he emboldened would be the ones holding the gavel instead, and using it to bang his pathetic political career to death.
