'They don't hold anybody ​accountable': One-time GOP strategist aghast at party's total lack of standards

On MSNBC Wednesday, former George W. Bush strategist Matthew Dowd scorched the Republican Party for refusing to make their scandal-plagued members take responsibility for their actions.

This comes after reporting that House Republican leadership are avoiding any public discussion of the controversy around Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) fabricating large parts of his life story for his campaign — even as they privately admit Santos' lies are "problematic."

"What does it say about the Republican Party that this is where it is right now?" asked anchor Jonathan Capehart. "That there's a person who's running for Speaker who is so desperate to become Speaker that you've got a QAnon-supported extremist who is saying everyone must vote for him, and meanwhile he's staying silent on a guy who's been revealed to have lied repeatedly about his own background, staying silent on all of this, all in the hopes of securing the magical 218."

"Well, I think what we've seen and as everybody I know on this panel has watched is they don't hold anybody accountable," said Dowd. "And they watched Donald Trump, according to The Washington Post, lie some 30,000 times, never held him accountable in the course of that. In the end it's all about power in this."

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"I think Kevin McCarthy recognizes that Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are probably much closer to the center of where the Republican voters in this country are than any sort of mainstream Republicans that are left in leadership or left as elected officials," said Dowd. "Just keep in mind, Jonathan, if you look at almost every single statewide key contest and key races, whether it's Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, nearly every one of those for Republicans — the Republican voters nominated election-denying, conspiracy theory anti-democratic candidates... in nearly every single race."

"And so this is a problem, obviously, that's coming to fruition in this leadership battle, but it's really a problem because, as I say, the center of the Republican Party, this is where the center of the Republican Party is and the voters are. And that's why people like Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy who want to have a linkage with the establishment or some part of the mainstream are really out of sync with where the Republican primary voters are."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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