This month, President Donald Trump has not only congratulated some far-right extremists for their victories in GOP congressional primaries — QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia and self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer in Florida — but also, refused to criticize QAnon when NBC News reporter Shannon Pettypiece asked him about the conspiracy cult during a press conference. Conservative opinion writer Jennifer Rubin discusses these events in her Washington Post column, citing them as proof that extremism and “nuttiness” are welcome in the modern-day Republican Party.
“It is a favorite game in politics to take the most extreme member of the other party and then paint the entire party as extreme,” Rubin explains. “However, when many candidates and officials, plus the head of the party, evidence nuttiness, it is fair to label the party as such.”
There is a slang term that has been used to describe the practice of using the occasional extremist to tar and feather an entire group: “nutpicking.” Rubin doesn’t actually use the word “nutpicking” in her column, but she addresses the concept and writes, in essence, that it would be unfair to describe the GOP as a party of extremists simply because of what Greene or Loomer has to say. The problem, according to Rubin, is that the type of “nuttiness” exemplified by Greene and Loomer isn’t the rare exception within the GOP — it is widespread. Continue reading.