The merger of the anti-tax Tea Partiers with the MAGA culture warriors is complete

Created
Sat, 28/01/2023 - 04:02
Updated
Sat, 28/01/2023 - 04:02
This is the new GOP establishment House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made good on his promise this week to exact revenge on Democrats for denying committee assignments to far-right extremists Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Paul Gosar, R-Az. He booted two California congressmen, Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, from the Select Committee on Intelligence. AS Speaker, McCarthy has the power to make this move unilaterally. But he is also proposing to kick Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Relations Committee, which will require a vote of the full House. The cycle of revenge has officially begun. It should be noted that the removal of Greene and Gosar, both of whom have addressed white nationalist gatherings and publicly advocated for the deaths of Democratic officials, was decided by a bipartisan vote by the full House. But that was an earlier, more innocent time. A golden era when death threats against Democratic colleagues were considered bad form by at least a handful of Republicans. It was all the way back in 2021, a lifetime ago. In the Republican Party of 2023, Kevin McCarthy’s clown show, such behavior is rewarded with plum committee assignments while prominent critics of Donald Trump are politically sacrificed in ritual acts of retribution. There is no difference now between McCarthy, Jim Jordan of Ohio, a Freedom Caucus founder, and Florida’s Matt Gaetz, a former MAGA gadfly. They are all the Republican establishment now. And nothing illustrates that better than the relationship between the Speaker of House McCarthy and his rightwing-woman Greene, whom he vowed to never…