The Last Great GOP RINO Hunt: Looks Like the Fascists Will Win

Kevin McCarthy - seeking reconciliation, went from saying the

ex-president incited the attempted coup on Jan. 6 to the lie 

that “everybody across this country” bore some responsibility

Credit...

Context

Over the last 12 years, major changes occurred in the GOP leadership and the rank and file to a major extent. The election of Obama in 2008 accelerated three pre-existing trends, leading to what are essentially final outcomes. First, the GOP completed an ideological cleansing process from moderately rational and reality-based conservatism to mostly irrational radical right anti-democratic authoritarianism that some people, including me, now consider to be a form of fascism. 

Second, it transitioned from a party willing to be reasonably bipartisan to a party focused on single party rule and total opposition to the democratic party and policies. That change (i) caused compromise and democratic governance to die, and (ii) included attacks on opposition and minority voting rights to be greatly intensified. Intolerance if dissent within the GOP itself extended to party leadership. Politicians seen to be too independent either forced out and retired or were attacked and replaced by authoritarian radicals.

Third, despite their success, the RINO hunts were not over despite years of internal ideological and dissent cleansing. The ex-president took the existing trends to their final conclusion and led to the last great GOP RINO hunt, which is underway right now. The split is between GOP leadership who supports the ex-president and those who finally decided they could no longer support him. Most rank and file republicans (~75% ?) appear to still rabidly support the ex-president, so presumably they are a significant factor in forcing the last RINO hunt (for the foreseeable future) to play out.

The last RINO hunt

Several sources are reporting on the GOP split. It looks like the fascist wing of the party is going to take full control. Leaders of the ex-president's supporters in congress are openly workinig to get rid of the remaining "normal" republicans. The New York Times writes:

Two weeks after [California] Representative Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, enraged Donald J. Trump by saying that he considered the former president responsible for the violent mob attack at the Capitol, the two men met on Thursday for what aides described as a “good and cordial” meeting, and sought to present a united front.

The meeting at Mr. Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., came two weeks after Mr. McCarthy, in a speech on the House floor, said that the former president “bears responsibility” for the events of Jan. 6, when a throng of his supporters stormed the Capitol after a rally in which Mr. Trump urged them to “fight like hell” against his election defeat.

It was the latest evidence that top Republicans, many of whom harshly criticized Mr. Trump after the assault, have quickly swung back into line behind him and are courting his support as he faces a second impeachment trial.

On Thursday, aides released a photograph of Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump posing together in one of the ornate rooms at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club, and issued a statement calling the meeting a “very good and cordial one.” The statement bore the hallmarks of Mr. Trump’s bombastic and often false assertions about himself, incorrectly claiming that his “popularity has never been stronger than it is today.”

“His endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time,” the statement, issued by Mr. Trump’s Save America political action committee, added, saying that Mr. Trump had agreed to work with Mr. McCarthy to try to take back the House majority in 2022.

Matt Gaetz (R-FL) - leading the last RINO hunt &

aiming for the big game called Liz Cheney (R-WY)

A short segment that NPR broadcast this morning focused on a recent trip to Wyoming by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in aid of the ongoing GOP fascist wing RINO hunt. He spoke to Wyoming republicans and promised to support a challenger to Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), the No. 3 House republican. Cheney criticized the ex-president and voted with nine republicans to impeach the ex-president on a charge of “incitement of insurrection.” The crowd loved the Gaetz attack on the RINO Cheney. They love the ex-president.

Whether they love it or not, or know it or not, an apparent majority of the GOP leadership and apparently most rank and file party member are settling into some form of demagogic fascism with an anti-democratic mindset. It is reasonable to believe that contempt for, or rejection of, inconvenient facts, inconvenient truths, inconvenient sound reasoning and inconvenient democratic norms will continue to dominate the rhetoric and behavior of the ascending fascist wing on the party. 

For now, the GOP will be unstable because the ex-president is its de facto leader and his approval rating among all Americans is low. Although the RNO hunt is not over, it seems that the pro-ex-president wing will win and take full control after the cleansing is completed in the next 2-4 years. At present, no major republican politician seems to have the gravitas to stop fascists from taking full control of the radical right GOP which has transitioned from a tribe to a personality cult.