This article is part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics newsletter. , the political scientist and scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, told HuffPost. “And vaulting to stardom means you’re going to be showcased at CPAC. It means you’re going to be able to become a national figure, by appearing regularly on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ And it means you’re going to be able to get a lot of money coming in.”
Another part of the explanation may be a broader change in the Republican Party as a whole ― in particular, the arrival of a younger generation who grew up hearing from their leaders that Democrats were socialist and fundamentally anti-American, and think extreme measures like crashing America’s credit rating in worldwide markets is a worthwhile, even necessary response.
“If in fact their ideology and the rhetoric that they’ve used all these years is right ― it’s not right, but if it were ― then the only truly only truly good position to take is that we’ve got to shut everything down,” Heather Cox Richardson, the Boston College historian and author of a widely read Substack, told HuffPost.
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Most Americans do not subscribe to these views, of course. But House Republicans are pushing ahead anyway. With their votes against McCarthy and the concessions they’ve already won, they are giving themselves a chance to impose their will anyway ― which, of course, is precisely what the insurrectionists were trying to do on January 6, when they tried to make Trump president even after he lost the election.
That was an act of political violence. This week’s votes were an act of political extortion. They were not the same thing, obviously. But they weren’t so different either.
