The DCCC has certainly been having a good time with Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Paul Gosar's new-- now an abandoned smoldering ruin-- Anglo Saxon Caucus. The DCCC approach is to tie the harebrained extremism to GOP leadership and the Republican Party. Their first press release on the new caucus dropped on Friday: Will Kevin McCarthy and Tom Emmer denounce Marjorie Taylor Greene’s new racist caucus? No one who doesn't work on Capitol Hill-- an primarily for the DCCC or the NRCC-- knows who Michele Bachmann successor Tom Emmer is, but McCarthy is a good target, especially since opinion polls consistently show that most Americans either don't know who the Republican minority leader/candidate for Speaker is or haven't formed an opinion of him yet. The DCCC knows they need to help them get to know him and help them form that opinion, one that ties him tightly to members his conference like Taylor Greene, Gosar, Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Mary Miller, Mad Cawthorn, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, Ronny Jackson, Clay Higgins and the other racists and sociopaths who seem to be driving GOP policy this year.
They were quick to point out that Taylor Greene, recipient of massive amounts bitcoin contributions has pledged $175,000 to the NRCC just as she began "recruiting lawmakers and distributing a policy platform for a white supremacist 'America First Caucus' that calls for a 'common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions' and infrastructure that 'befits the progeny of European architecture.' The caucus platform attacks immigrant communities, furthers the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election, and calls on Republicans in Congress to follow the politics of Donald Trump that exploited the racial divide in America and led to an increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic."
The press release emphasizes that "McCarthy NRCC Chairman Rep. Tom Emmer, and every single congressional Republican must denounce Greene’s white nationalist caucus... 'Minority Leader McCarthy is standing by and allowing extreme figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene to hijack the GOP and turn it into the party of white nationalism and QAnon conspiracy theories. Every single House Republican must immediately denounce this toxic agenda-- their failure to do so is a full embrace of Greene’s ugly politics of conspiracy and racism.'"
And some-- not many, but some-- did just that! Many of them, though are former members of Congress, like Carlos Curbelo (FL), Denver Riggleman (VA) and ex-Speaker John Boehner (OH), who said on Meet the Press that the caucus "is one of the nuttiest things I've ever seen" and that "Republicans need to denounce it." Curbelo defined what Taylor Greene and Gosar were trying to start as "a modern, decaf version of the KKK-- a group designed to elevate one race and ethnicity by diminishing all others. It should be summarily dismissed and condemned." Riggleman was almost as harsh: "If the GOP doesn't stand up and identify these individuals for who they are… there's real trouble there."
Most current members danced around the issue, although some stood up to the fascists in their own party, Adam Kinzinger (IL) tweeted that he believes "anyone that joins this caucus should have their committees stripped, and the Republican conference should expel them from conference participation. While we can’t prevent someone from calling themselves Republican, we can loudly say they don’t belong to us."
John Katko of Syracuse, who represents the bluest district of any Republican in Congress (D+2) chastised the Gang-Greene by reminding them that "Racism and nativism are antithetical to our core principles and should have no place in our society, let alone the Halls of Congress."
Liz Cheney, who is going to have a tough time holding onto her at-large Wyoming seat, one of fetch most politically backward in America, where Trump beat Biden 70% to 26.6%, slammed the Gang-Greene caucus by insisting the GOP rejects "racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism." (In her dreams.) The most anyone could get out of McCarthy in way of a denunciation was his delusion that the GOP is somehow still "the party of Lincoln and the party of more opportunity for all Americans-- not nativist dog whistles."
The DCCC followed up yesterday with a second press release insinuating that McCarthy's "dog whistles" are actually fog horns marking the "GOP’s Gradual Descent Into 'Replacement Theory' And 'Nativist Dog Whistles' [and noting that] two years after stripping Steve King from committees, McCarthy cedes leadership to nativist horde."
Mc·Car·thy·ism is going to need a new definition after Leader Kevin McCarthy is finished.
As the GOP House members continue to make news for the all the wrong reasons and two years removed from stripping former Rep. Steve King of his committee assignments for bigoted, white nationalist comments, McCarthy is allowing QAnon white-nationalist extremists to run roughshod over the GOP with no consequence.
Read the latest from the Washington Post on how the “increasing prominence” of white nationalist ideas that were once relegated to the fringes are now taking hold “in mainstream GOP circles” thanks to the failure of Republican leaders like McCarthy to keep the extremist wings of his caucus in check." The key points in Aaron Blake's report:
If there’s one surprise in the conservative movement’s increasing embrace of “replacement theory,” it might be that it didn’t happen sooner.
President Donald Trump made skepticism of immigrants and refugees his calling card beginning with the launch of his 2016 presidential campaign, accusing countries of sending “rapists” and “murderers” to the border. But it’s taken until Trump was out of office for the idea that immigrants are “replacing” and thus diluting other American voters-- an idea that has been popular with white supremacists and white nationalists-- to begin to take hold.
It was about eight years ago that Republicans reacted to the last presidential election they had lost-- in 2012-- with an “autopsy” placing a premium on getting right on the increasing influence of Latinos in American elections and, more broadly, on immigration reform. Efforts to craft a bipartisan immigration bill had repeatedly fallen by the wayside, but the fast-increasing influence of Hispanic voters made the party worry about its ability to win future elections.
That, though, began to shift gradually as the Trump administration wore on. Today, some elements of the conservative movement are going far beyond warning about a potential path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and instead arguing that immigrants and refugees present a more imminent threat-- not necessarily to society, but electorally.
But by 2018, this began to morph into replacement theory-- not just that undocumented immigrants, if given a path to citizenship, might vote more strongly for Democrats, but that these votes would effectively “replace” other, native-born voters.
Over the past two years the rhetoric of some Fox News personalities has overlapped with a racist conspiracy theory regularly cited by white supremacists.
In recent weeks, it has accelerated. The idea of replacement has been pushed prominently by Fox host Tucker Carlson, causing an outcry including calls for his resignation. Fox News has stood by him. Extreme members of the House Republican conference like former congressman Steve King (R-IA) have occasionally espoused variations of it. In recent days, though, it seems to have worked its way even more into the mainstream of Republican lawmakers. Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) said that “what appears to them is we’re replacing … native-born Americans to permanently transform the political landscape of this very nation.” Ron Johnson (R-WI) asked more recently whether Democrats “really … want to remake the demographics of America to ensure their-- that they stay in power forever? Is that what’s happening here?”
In a somewhat similar development, Punchbowl News reported two of the of the most extreme members of the House GOP conference had formed an America First Caucus, which describes itself as promoting “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and warns of mass immigration impacting the “unique identity” of the country. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) are reportedly behind the group, while embattled Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said he is joining it.
It’s an idea that has been lurking beneath the surface in the GOP for a long time, but it apparently took another Democratic president in office for it to truly take hold.
But the increasing prominence of this idea in mainstream GOP circles, even after Trump has left office and with basically no pushback among top party members, says a lot about how he has changed the party in lasting ways. Republicans were somewhat scared to say these kinds of things before, even when immigration reform was a huge issue; that fear-- both of aligning with a theory espoused by racists and of alienating demographics the GOP once worried could break them-- has apparently dissipated.