[ad_1]
Dana Milbank:
But while Cheney continues to speak the truth about Trump’s election fantasies and his role in the Capitol attack, McCarthy went to Florida soon after the insurrection to see a politically finished Trump and “resurrected him politically back to life.”
“He basically made the decision when he went to Mar-a-Lago that he was not going to be a leader of the Republican Party,” Kinzinger told the press club. “… I don’t consider him to be speaking on behalf of the Republican Party anymore because he gave his voting card, gave his proxy card, to Donald Trump.” Kinzinger called the attempt to oust Cheney “ludicrous” and said that, after Jan. 6, “the person that should have their leadership challenged is Kevin McCarthy.”
And as Max Boot at The Washington Post points out, if you think Republicans in DC are out of touch with reality, the GOP at the state level is far worse:
Since this is a column, not an encyclopedia, I can only begin to scratch the surface of grass-roots Republican derangement and extremism. I can mention only in passing that Republicans in the Michigan House of Representatives recently heard testimonyon vaccine passports from Naomi Wolf, who has become notorious for spreading covid-19 lies. That the Michigan state Republican chairman referred to Democrats as “witches” and speculated about the assassination of pro-impeachment Republicans. That one of the leading GOP candidates for governor of Virginia called the mob that stormed the Capitol “patriots.” That GOP state legislators around the country have praised the constitutional provision that enslaved people would count as only three-fifths of a person in determining congressional representation. And, worst of all, that GOP-controlled state legislatures are passing legislation to restrict voting in order, ostensibly, to combat election fraud (which is nearly nonexistent and completely inconsequential).
Meanwhile, at The Nation, John Nichols takes a close look at Cheney’s soon-to-be replacement — Rep. Elise Stefanik, and points out she’s actually been less a loyal vote for Trump than the person she is going to replace:
Consider the FiveThirtyEight “Tracking Congress in the Age of Trump” tally of how often members of Congress voted with or against the former president. Cheney scored a striking 92.9 Trump loyalty rating. That was higher than Trump pitchmen such as Florida Republican Matt Gaetz (85 percent) and Ohio Republican Jim Jordan (88 percent). Cheney even rated above Alabama Republican Mo Brooks (88.6 percent), who actually appeared at the January 6 rally where the incitement of insurrection occurred.
What of Stefanik? She rated just 77.7 percent on the Trump loyalty scale.
On a final note, don’t miss Eugene Robinson’s analysis of the GOP leadership shakeup:
The greatest threat to our nation’s future is not covid-19 or the rise of China or even the existential challenge of climate change. It is the Republican Party’s attempt to seize and hold power by offering voters the seductive choice of rejecting inconvenient facts and basic logic.
For the American experiment and people to survive, much less prosper, this iteration of the GOP must fail.
The blind-loyalty-even-to-dishonest-insanity Republican litmus test that is about to cost Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) her leadership job is only the most acute manifestation of the party’s decline into utter irresponsibility. It’s bad enough that those who want to remain in good standing must embrace the “big lie”about purported fraud in the 2020 election. But the requirement doesn’t stop there. On issue after issue, Republicans are cynically adopting a kind of pre-Enlightenment insistence on the primacy of belief over evidence.
[ad_2]
Source link
