MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and conservative attorney George Conway lamented that "nihilists" had taken over the Republican Party and were destroying American democracy from within.
Far-right lawmakers like Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene have been given committee assignments by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and the "Morning Joe" host and Conway discussed how their leadership within the GOP caucus showed how far the party had devolved into reactionary illiberalism.
"I read something fascinating, a conversation with David Brooks and Bret Stephens, and Bret Stephens asking David Brooks when he noticed the split, talked about certain Dartmouth students who went on to be in the media world and he said, these were Dartmouth students that Mika knew back in the 1980s," Scarborough said, "but these Dartmouth students, he noticed after talking to them, they weren't interested in governing. They were interested in just gesturing and owning the libs, and instead of Reagan's sunny optimism, his conservatism, they aren't conservatives as much as they were illiberals, and that's what we have here -- illiberals who weren't interested in governing but interested in owning the libs, and what does this mean for this country over the next two years?"
"Just basically nihilists -- nothing matters to them," Conway said. "Governing doesn't matter to them. It's all about attention-seeking and self-gratification and also, let's not forget the grift. All of the small-dollar fund-raising, it's all about the grift, getting attention. There are people out there who like seeing things get destroyed, and things get ruined, and look, there's a self-sustaining aspect to it that when, the more the government kind of falls into dysfunction, the more they say, 'Ah, see, the federal government, the government doesn't work,' and becomes self-justifying in the spiral into dysfunction."
Republicans narrowly took control of the House but failed to regain a Senate majority in November's midterm elections, and Scarborough blamed that performance on the dynamic that has encouraged right-wing bomb-throwers like Gosar and Greene.
"Circle back to something we've talked about, Republicans lost -- again -- and in the House, so badly underperformed and now have the speakership that is constantly in peril," Scarborough said. "The majority constantly in peril, and here's the problem. George was talking about the grift. I was talking about the grift, what they've done is learned to create cottage industries, you have a podcast or whatever you have, you can make money by owning the libs. You can make -- not govern, but you can make money by owning the libs. You can carve out a good little corner of the market, you can make millions of dollars if you are a member of Congress. You can say the most extreme, outrageous things. You can talk about how Jesus would have escaped crucifixion if he had more AR-15s, talk about Jewish space lasers if you're Marjorie Taylor Greene. You can talk about killing Democratic members like AOC, if you're Paul Gosar, and what happens? They're rewarded, because there's a cottage industry of extremists that will send $25 checks to these most extreme members and suddenly they're raising $6 million, $7 million, $8 million a cycle? Whereas if they were actually working and governing, maybe raise $500,000, $1 million a cycle."
"This is important for our viewers to understand what the Republicans are doing and why they're doing it, they're doing it for the grift, first of all, but secondly, why is it enough to get them rich but not enough to get them to win elections?" he added. "Because they're micro-targeting, and in that micro-targeting, making all of that money there are people that wake up and go to work and in suburban Atlanta, in suburban Philadelphia, in suburban Detroit, in suburban Milwaukee, and they're like, 'These people are crazy -- I'm not voting for them,' and why Democrats keep winning elections."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
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