Never did
If it was not clear before, it is clear now. The Republican Party, fueled since the Newt Gingrich revolution by the insecurities and grievances of white, Christian males in a changing world is reduced at long last to its essence (New York Times):
After two days of chaos and confusion on the House floor, Republicans have made it abundantly clear who is leading their party: absolutely no one.
From the halls of Congress to the Ohio Statehouse to the back-room dealings of the Republican National Committee, the party is confronting an identity crisis unseen in decades. With no unified legislative agenda, clear leadership or shared vision for the country, Republicans find themselves mired in intraparty warfare, defined by a fringe element that seems more eager to tear down the House than to rebuild the foundation of a political party that has faced disappointment in the past three national elections.
Revanchism is all that’s left. There is no positive GOP agenda. No vision of a better tomorrow. No city on a hill. Just power for power’s sake, power enough to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
All those years when Republicans swore they would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with something better-liked by their donors came to nothing. They failed to tear it down. They had nothing with which to replace it anyway. The unveiling of Donald Trump’s better, cheaper ACA replacement was perpetually two weeks out over his entire term.
“Infrastructure Week” became a running joke during Trump’s term. But in Kentucky yesterday, President Joe Biden, flanked by Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and a bipartisan mix of lawmakers, touted his infrastructure package that will take pressure off the troubled Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River.
“For decades, people have talked about the Brent Spence Bridge,” Biden said. “Folks, the talking is over. With the bipartisan infrastructure law, we’re finally going to get it done.”
The Republican Party led by a reality show host who bragged of his success at building things succeeded only at building a portion of pointless border wall to appeaze his party’s xenopohobes.
But wrecking? They’re hell at wrecking.
That ideology of destruction defies characterization by traditional political labels like moderate or conservative. Instead, the party has created its own complicated taxonomy of America First, MAGA and anti-Trump — descriptions that are more about political style and personal vendettas than policy disagreements.
This iteration of the Grand Old Party, with its narrow majority in the House empowering conservative dissidents, represents a striking reversal of the classic political maxim that Democrats need to fall in love while Republicans just fall in line.
“The members who began this have little interest in legislating, but are most interested in burning down the existing Republican leadership structure,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who embodies the party’s pre-Trump era. “Their behavior shows the absence of power corrupts just as absolutely as power does.”
Events reveal that Trump was not so much a driver of the breakdown as a catalyst. He stood on the shoulders of the decades-old, grievance economy powering Fox News and right-wing talk. He taught followers they could publicly vent racial frustrations over cultural changes they perceive cost them social status to non-white minorities, and do so without blowback.
Trump retains no influence over Republicans in the House. They give him lip service but obeissance no longer. When Trump asked the insurgent bloc to knock it off, they responded by blowing him off.
“Our movement is embracing the chaos,” said John Fredericks, former Virginia chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and a right-wing talk host.
“The movement has eclipsed its Trump leadership,” Mr. Fredericks said on Wednesday. “We found 20 new leaders.”
That’s a very different definition of a leader from the traditional image of a legislator muscling policy through Congress and reshaping American life. In the new conservative ecosystem, leaders are born of the outrage that drives news coverage on the right and fuels online fund-raising.
They are not interested in being legislators, the job for which they were hired, but influencers.
The greatest irony in coverage of this Speakership debacle is reporters asking Newtie where the fire came from. Anti-McCarthy Republicans, Gingrich said, are “playing with fire.”
“I think the guys in the House are doing substantial damage to the Republican Party and don’t even realize it,” said the man who in 1994 brought the matches.