Majorie Taylor Greene begins attacking Kevin McCarthy as House Republicans find themselves on verge of civil war
The thing about Speaker Nancy Pelosi is that even with all the differences in ideologies and personalities within the House Democratic caucus, she’s able to keep them all reasonably united and properly focused. Contrast that with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who is unable to control the pro-Trump extremists or the less extremist members within his own caucus.
For instance, McCarthy has been unwilling or unable to do anything to keep House Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene from behaving in deranged fashion. In fact it was House Democrats who had to remove her from committees, after McCarthy failed to. McCarthy looked like an idiot when thirteen House Republicans crossed party lines without him and voted for the Democrats’ infrastructure bill. And of course McCarthy has also been unable to stop House Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from going after Donald Trump and his allies.
Now Kevin McCarthy’s status as a deer in the headlights is boiling over. Marjorie Taylor Greene is attacking McCarthy on Twitter, accusing him of a “failure of leadership” because he failed to punish the House Republicans who voted for infrastructure. Greene is also seemingly blaming McCarthy for the fact that House Republican Paul Gosar was recently kicked off committees, even though it was the Democrats (along with Cheney and Kinzinger) who made that happen.
Greene’s escalating attacks on McCarthy are interesting to say the least. McCarthy fancies himself as being in line for Speaker of the House if the Republicans win the midterms. But now Greene is publicly trying to take his legs out a year before that can even happen. Assuming McCarthy continues his pattern of simply running his mouth while doing nothing at all, Greene will likely step up her efforts against McCarthy and push for his outright ouster.
It’s not clear that Greene can drum up enough House Republican support to oust Kevin McCarthy from his leadership position. But this escalating pattern does put the House Republican caucus on the verge of a very public civil war – and that’s the last thing Republicans need heading into the midterms. No one in the middle wants to vote for the party whose members spend all their time publicly sniping at each other.
If you’re rooting for House Democrats to keep majority control in the midterms, then you should root for House Republicans to step up their attacks against each other. That kind of chaos only improves the Democrats’ odds of winning.
