GOP leader Kevin McCarthy will have his hands full with 'oddballs and extremists': columnist

According to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, should the Republican party reclaim control of the House after the November midterm election House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy -- expected to be the next Speaker -- is going to have his hands full with additional far-right pro-Trump extremists and conspiracy theorists joining his caucus.

After two years of dealing with controversial Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and outgoing lawmaker Madison Cawthorn who lost his North Carolina primary, Millbank said there are plenty more like them headed his way if they survive the November general election.

Lumping them together as a "rogues' gallery," the longtime Washington D.C. political analyst noted that most attention has been paid to GOP Senate candidates like Pennsylvania's Mehmet Oz -- of "crudité fame" -- and "Herschel Walker’s … well, pretty much everything he says and does," before adding that the House line-up has a cast of characters who are equally troublesome for the party.

To make his point, he wrote, "There’s the woman from North Carolina who was accused of hitting one husband with an alarm clock, trying to hit another with a car (and also menacing him with a frying pan) and punching her daughter. She denies that, though she also invoked a conspiracy belief that alien lizards control the government," before adding, "There’s the man from Michigan who claimed that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman participated in a satanic ritual, who once disparaged women’s suffrage, and who, though Black, raised concern about Democrats 'eroding the white population,'" and the "the Texas woman accused by her estranged husband of cruelty toward his teenage daughter; the Colorado woman who backed an effort to secede from her state; the Virginia woman who speculated that rape victims wouldn’t get pregnant; and the Wisconsin man who used campaign funds from his failed 2020 race to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, where he apparently breached Capitol barricades."

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What they have in common, he notes, is that they all have a fighting chance of winning which should be of concern to all voters -- but especially McCarthy who may find they won't listen to him and might in fact, balk at making him Speaker.

"That’s on top of a larger group of GOP nominees in deep-red congressional districts who are a motley assortment of election deniers, climate-change deniers, QAnon enthusiasts and Jan. 6 participants who propose to abolish the FBI and ban abortion with no exceptions, among other things," Milbank explained before quipping, "Many members of his new majority might be good candidates for commitment."

"Of course, the People’s House has always attracted the eccentric, and even the shady, from both parties. But the would-be Republican Class of ’22 is extraordinary in the number of oddballs and extremists in its ranks," he added before elaborating, "This is no accident: The trend in Republican primaries, accelerated by Trump, has favored those with the most eye-popping tapestry of conspiracy theories and unyielding positions. GOP primaries are dominated by a sliver of the electorate on the far right," before predicting, "The House Republican Class of ’22 will be many things, but 'boring' is not one of them."

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