'Get a grip': WSJ editor warns the GOP they are about to descend into a frenzy of 'self-mutilation'

After watching House Republicans squabble and almost come to blows over the selection of a new speaker after taking control of the chamber in the midterms, the former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal expressed his disgust with the state of the GOP in a blistering column.

Former editor-in-chief Gerard Baker started off by praising the stellar job former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) did with her own caucus and contrasted that with last week's chaos over a simple leadership vote that was televised by C-SPAN in all of its embarrassing glory.

According to Baker, it's time for Republicans "to get a grip" in light of last week's turmoil coming on the heels of a midterm election disaster that saw the Republican Party lose a Senate seat and take over the House by the slimmest of margins when a "red wave" was expected.

He began by praising the House Democrats by writing, "Today, the Democratic Party may be the most ruthlessly organized and efficient political entity in the world—and I include the Chinese Communist Party. Xi Jinping probably looks across the Pacific with envy at the iron party solidarity over which House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries presides."

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As for the GOP leadership thus far, he is less than impressed and warned them that they are headed down the road to an election debacle in 2024 whether Donald Trump is in on the ticket -- as some Republicans fear -- or not.

In particular, he warned that what will bedevil the Republicans are their self-inflicted wounds.

"Joe Biden will shortly announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Despite his age, his evident cognitive decline and the risk of an accident that results in President Kamala Harris, and even if by this time next year the U.S. economy is mired in recession, he will be re-nominated by acclamation. This will be no 1968 or 1976 for the incumbent," he wrote before bluntly stating, "The Republicans meanwhile, are about to embark on yet another orgy of self-mutilation, one that may make last week’s Grand Guignol in the House look positively amicable."

Then he got to his point.

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"Republicans need to get a grip—and fast—or they, and we, are going to lose the ability to halt this country’s march to the left for a decade or more. The lessons of history couldn’t be clearer. Divided parties lose elections. Parties that indulge their most unrepresentative dogmatists alienate the rest. Parties that put ideological purity over governing become neither ideologically pure nor any longer in government," he wrote.

As for the House speaker fight last week, he added, "... as I watched the spectacle unfold on C-Span’s briefly liberated cameras, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the observation of the French general who watched the British immolate themselves in the charge of the light brigade at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. It’s magnificent, he said, but it isn’t war."

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