As Trump hovers on the sidelines egging on GOP antagonists who have adopted his chaos-sowing tactics and vile rhetoric, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried unsuccessfully Tuesday to turn down the temperature in a roiling feud between freshman Republican Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
Greene had started off the sniping by calling Mace “trash” on Twitter for condemning the Islamophobic comments of her ally, Colorado GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert. Mace was one of the few Republicans to speak up after video emerged of Boebert delivering remarks at a November 20 event in Colorado, at which the firebrand Coloradoan told a story about a supposed elevator ride with Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who is Muslim and wears a hijab. The punchline of the story ended with Boebert suggesting Omar is a terrorist.
The spat spilled out to other members when Greene took issue with Mace’s condemnation of Boebert’s anti-Muslim remarks. The South Carolinian told CNN on Sunday that Boebert’s statements were “disgusting.” Greene, always eager for a public spat to burnish her credentials among her donors, attacked Mace’s conservative credentials on Twitter and warned her to “back up off” Boebert.
The back-and-forth between the two Republicans continued all day Tuesday with Greene taunting in one tweet that she’d “just had a great conversation with President Trump about @NancyMace.” The South Carolina Republican replied: “I like my freshman colleagues who don’t think 9/11 was a hoax…” — a reference to Greene’s past embrace of conspiracy theories — “This one on the other hand… totally (nuts).” Mace added that Greene’s conversation with Trump amounted to running to the principal’s office “because she can’t stand on her own two feet.”
GOP’s gutter politics
In its totality, the embarrassing inter-party schism — and the lack of immediate consequences for Boebert’s inflammatory comments — underscored that the gutter politics that Trump ushered into Washington have only gotten worse following his retreat from the White House.
Republican leaders like McCarthy, whose chances of becoming speaker of the House hinge on maintaining the support of Trump and his hard-right acolytes, have not shown that they have any effectual way of dealing with the increasingly angry and toxic culture within the House of Representatives that has led to frightening threats…
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