Ex-Trump official sees 'last dying gasp of the moderates in the Republican Party'
Miles Taylor, the former Homeland Security official and infamous "Anonymous" author from Donald Trump's administration, is a longtime Republican, but he sees the crisis in Congress as something different than typical GOP infighting.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Monday, pointed out that the nine new Republicans seeking the speaker's spot aren't absolved of being against the election certification in 2020 or even future ones. The two members who claim the 2020 election was legitimate, Reps. Tom Emmer (R-MN) and Austin Scott (R-GA), also voted to certify the election. Scott previously supported Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who didn't support election certification.
"I am also worried that they voted to certify, but they also joined the Texas lawsuit," said Wallace. "There is no one who is clean on the 2020 election."
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Taylor agreed, saying that he thinks Americans should reject the framing of Congress and the Republican disarray.
"We are talking about this like it is a civil war within the Republican Party," he began. "I want to flip the script. I don't think it is a civil war on the Republican Party. I think what we are watching is the last dying gasp of the moderates in the Republican Party. There are a handful of moderates hanging on by a shoestring. And the data shows that — if you go back and look — a FiveThirtyEight blog did an analysis of this a couple of years ago. When Donald Trump came into office, there were 293 Republicans in Congress in the House and Senate. By the time he left, those numbers had been gutted in half."
As for people who are more center-right, Tayor said most got primaried or retired during Trump's presidency.
"There was a hollowing out of the center of the Republican Party," Taylor continued. He went on to cite former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who was also on the panel, calling the right the "crazy caucus."
"I would submit they are not a caucus anymore. It is a Republican Party now overtaken by the crazies. We are seeing the result of that. I look at the list you showed on the screen; I see what I saw two years ago," said Taylor. "Whoever is the speaker for the Republicans, it is going to be Donald Trump with his hand around the gavel. Are they going to push back against Trump? Or be just like Kevin McCarthy, was Donald Trump's spirit holding the speaker's gavel?"
He estimated that if any of those people on the list Wallace showed win, they'll be serving Trumpism, even if they've tried to lean less far-right in the past year.
"That is the worry here as we still have a party that's completely commanded by one person, one person's views, and one person's vitriol," said Taylor. "That's what we're witnessing as the dying gasp of the moderates. And those extremists are really cementing their control over the party. And as a result, we are seeing the chaos that is an output of those crazies taking over the GOP."
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