ICYMI: GOP Captured by MAGA Extremism
The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein: “The role of extremist white nationalists in the GOP may be approaching an inflection point.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As The Atlantic reported this morning, yesterday’s anti-Semitic comments by Ye and Trump’s decision to dine with anti-Semitic white supremacist Nick Fuentes are proof that extremists are more powerful and deeply embedded in the modern GOP than ever.
This analysis comes just weeks before Republicans are set to take control of the House of Representatives, armed with an extreme agenda that is deeply out of step with what the American people want.
Key excerpts from the article include:
“Yet others remain unconvinced that the GOP is ready to fundamentally break with Trump or ostracize the coalition’s overtly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic white supremacists and Christian nationalists. “I think what we are looking at is the entrenchment of extremism, and that’s what is so worrisome,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told me.”
“If anything, extremist groups could gain momentum in the coming months. Musk’s proposed mass amnesty for banned Twitter accounts would provide “a tremendous amount of oxygen to extremists on the radical right” and allow those groups to push back much harder against any Republican elected officials resisting their presence in the party, Michael Edison Hayden of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project told me. If Musk opens the door to extremist organizing on Twitter, Hayden said, the white-nationalist presence in the GOP coalition will become “potentially irreversible in the short term.””
“The rush of GOP leaders such as McCarthy, DeSantis, and incoming House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan to support Musk as he works to restore more banned accounts shows how hard it will be for the GOP to completely divorce itself from white and Christian nationalism. So does McCarthy’s pledge to restore committee assignments to Greene and Gosar, as well as the reluctance of almost all GOP officials to directly criticize Trump.”
“In a similar vein, in the days before the election, McCarthy made clear that he would restore committee assignments to Greene and Gosar, whom the Democratic majority had stripped of such roles for their association with extremists and embrace of violent imagery. McCarthy also promised Greene and other hardline conservatives that he would authorize an investigation into the government’s prosecution and treatment of the January 6 insurrectionists, many of whom are extremists tied to white and Christian nationalism.”
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The House Accountability War Room is an independent rapid response operation led by veteran war room strategist Zac Petkanas. The war room will leverage research, deploy messaging and engage partners to hold House leadership accountable as the caucus moves to take away core freedoms, distort the truth, and put the profits of corporations above the wellbeing of working families.