{"id":3681,"date":"2023-01-07T03:57:49","date_gmt":"2023-01-07T09:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3681"},"modified":"2023-03-19T21:31:30","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T02:31:30","slug":"mccarthy-is-being-consumed-by-the-maga-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3681","title":{"rendered":"McCarthy is being consumed by the MAGA politics he helped push<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin McCarthy\u00a0is the latest Republican leader to find out that it\u2019s impossible to get ahead of his party\u2019s inexorable march to its far-right extremes.
\nThe Californian, who has lost a stunning\u00a011 consecutive House roll call votes\u00a0in his bid to become speaker, was the first major GOP leader to embrace\u00a0ex-President Donald Trump\u00a0after the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
\nBut on Friday\u2019s\u00a0two-year anniversary\u00a0of the worst attack on American democracy in the modern era, he\u2019s finding out that even that\u00a0supposedly career-enhancing bet\u00a0is insufficient to unlock the votes of Trump\u2019s heirs in the chaos wing of the GOP.
\nMcCarthy is becoming the latest example of a political leader consumed by a revolution the \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d radicals helped to stage. For the radical lawmakers now blocking his ascent to his dream job, he\u2019s become the political establishment he once condemned.
\nRepublicans won control of the House through democratic means in a free and fair election. But their far smaller-than-expected majority is offering extra leverage to the kind of pro-Trump extremists many voters appeared to reject in last year\u2019s midterms.
\nBut not even Trump himself \u2013 the author of the election-denying scam that led to the insurrection and who once could move the GOP in the House with a single phone call \u2013 could rally MAGA fundamentalists in the House for McCarthy. His failure to do so hints at diminished influence for the ex-president after his limp launch of a 2024 White House bid and a disastrous midterm election campaign for his chosen candidates. It might show that the wildest manifestations of Trumpism no longer need Trump himself.
\nTwo years ago, scores of House Republicans refused to certify President Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 election victory and many spent years appeasing Trump\u2019s lawless behavior. Yet after driving democracy to the brink, the GOP controls one half of Capitol Hill \u2013 or will if it eventually gets its act together and picks a speaker.
\nIn another surreal scene on the Hill this week, one of those Republicans, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene \u2013 who has downplayed the insurrection and said rioters would have \u201cwon\u201d if she was in charge \u2013 is complaining about the extremism of some of her colleagues who oppose McCarthy.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s not serious. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s leadership, and I really see it as more obstruction than progress,\u201d she told CNN\u2019s Manu Raju on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Edition<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin McCarthy\u00a0is the latest Republican leader to find out that it\u2019s impossible to get ahead of his party\u2019s inexorable march to its far-right extremes. The Californian, who has lost a stunning\u00a011 consecutive House roll call votes\u00a0in his bid to become speaker, was the first major GOP leader to embrace\u00a0ex-President Donald Trump\u00a0after the January 6, 2021, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3682,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1613,1285,1561,2665,1345,2891,1230,3165],"class_list":["post-3681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-election","tag-his","tag-leader","tag-maga","tag-mccarthy","tag-politics","tag-trump","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8049,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions\/8049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}