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Opinion | US House speaker debacle forces Republican Party to contend with far-right faction of its own making
- Hardline Republicans were able to repeatedly block Kevin McCarthy’s bid, forcing him to make heavy concessions
- Their actions signal the triumph of an ultraconservative movement within the party that has been nurtured for decades
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Why you can trust SCMP
It took 15 ballots to swear in Kevin McCarthy as the new speaker of the House. It was the latest example that the Republican Party, the party of Reagan and Lincoln, remains incoherent and ungovernable, but the apogee has still not been reached.
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It was a Herculean effort by what has been described as the Republican extreme. The likes of Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar, who, under Donald Trump, moved from the party’s fringes to the mainstream, proved yet again just how politically irresponsible they are and how little regard for policy they possess.
Trump is often credited with ushering in the element of extremism into the party. In reality, he simply utilised an element of craziness that has long been tolerated and, yes, cultivated by the party in exchange for power.
Republicans like Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and even Sarah Palin had pushed the party’s Overton Window and created a lane that allowed for Trump’s impossibilities to occur.
In the 1960s, Goldwater founded a strictly conservative movement within the party, intending to combat the then-dominant socially progressive Democrats and the increasingly liberal zeitgeist.
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