On Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat," former Republican strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson analyzed how the Republican Party is likely to use its new, narrow House majority.
This came minutes after NBC News projected that Republicans had secured the 218th House seat necessary to take control of the chamber.
"I think that what we're seeing right now is, McCarthy will have a little 30-second victory lap, but the crazy runs the party," said Wilson. "Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan — the lunatics are fully in charge of the asylum. You're going to see, they're going to drive the agenda, and if Kevin gets off the reservation, they're going to be in a position where basically ... they have full control of this thing, and unless Kevin stays on an agenda for them and for Trump, with endless Hunter Biden laptop investigations, endless conspiracy theories, persecuting Dr. Fauci — they will eat him alive. The crazy is in charge."
"I will say this," Wilson added. "[Speaker] Nancy Pelosi's able to hold her coalition together, her caucus together, keeping the Squad and moderate Democrats all in relative harmony."
On the other hand, he said, the "nihilism" of the "Trump MAGA cohort" is "much more intense" — something that will be far more difficult for a Speaker McCarthy to contain.
"They're not going to try to govern, they're going to try to own the libs and they're going to try to set up a big culture war for 2024," said Wilson. "And they're going to try to pave the way for Donald Trump, who is the person they're most loyal to in the House, above Kevin McCarthy by an order of magnitude. So I think the insanity is going to begin very quickly, and they're going to go through two years of show trials and hearings and persecutions and it's going to become something I think most voters will roll their eyes at first, and then get irritated with and look at it as a political repellant in the '24 cycle."
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Rick Wilson on how the new GOP House majority will functionwww.youtube.com
