Tag: GOP now a party of extremists

Here’s how extremism not only goes unpunished in today’s GOP — it is encouraged

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Joe Scarborough, the Never Trump conservative and former Republican congressman who co-hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC with his liberal wife, Mika Brzezinski — and who rooted for now-President Joe Biden in the 2020 election — recently described his former party as consisting of ultra-conservative politicians like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and QAnon extremists who think Cheney is too far to the left. Journalist Molly Jong-Fast, in an op-ed published by the Daily Beast on July 8, discusses extremism with the 2021 GOP and argues that extremism is difficult to resist among modern Republicans.

“This is the Republican brand now: death before decency,” Jong-Fast writes. “What Roy’s colleague Paul Gosar learned from Trumpism is that working with terrifying far-right extremists is totally cool. Gosar is now even more far-right than Steve King, who was censured for his white nationalist statements back when Republicans at least pretended to give a shit. Now, Gosar is being praised by White nationalist Nick Fuentes — and minority ‘Leader’ Kevin McCarthy is fine with that, just like he’s fine with Marjorie Taylor Greene raving about the Jews and Matt Gaetz (R-Sex Creep) staying on the House Ethics Committee so that he could question the head of the FBI while continuing to be investigated by the FBI.”

Jong-Fast continues, “Meanwhile, Stop the Steal speaker Mo Brooks is now running for Senate in Alabama. Brooks, who was a planner of the January 6 rally, according to a deleted video from Ali Alexander, claims in a new civil filing that he only spoke at the rally-turned-riot because the White House told him to. That was in the same legal filing in which he said he believes that Trump still won the election. Trump did not.” Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson villainizes journalists on his top-rated show. Then the threats pour in.

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As the Fox host’s popularity grows, he has found fodder in lesser-known media figures whom he presents as symbols of liberalism-run-amok.

Brandy Zadrozny, a reporter for NBC News who covers online extremism, was working on a story last fall about the right-wing websites that had promoted conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden. One of her queries was to Darren Beattie, a former Donald Trump speechwriter who allegedly wrote for one of those sites.

But instead of answering her questions, Beattie lashed out at Zadrozny in a blog post calling her an “ideologically-motivated hit-man” with a practice of “targeting Trump supporters for doxing, censorship and harassment.”

It might have remained a small, nasty online grudge. But Beattie soon got an opportunity to bring his views to a much-larger platform: that night’s episode of Tucker Carlson’s prime-time Fox News show, which was watched by more than 5.3 million people. Continue reading.

Arizona GOP Hires Conspiracy Theorist To Conduct Third 2020 Election ‘Audit’

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Arizona Senate President Karen Fann announced that she has hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm led by a Donald Trump supporter who was active in pushing “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, to conduct an audit of the state’s election results.

This is the third audit to be conducted in the state as Republicans continue to push the lie that the election was stolen from Trump due to mass voter fraud — a lie that’s been debunked multiple times by the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and two previous audits of Arizona’s ballots.

Fann said the third audit will consist of a full hand recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, the most populous county in the state and formerly a Republican stronghold. Continue reading.

An Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P.

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As more far-right Republicans take office and exercise power, party officials are promoting unity and neutrality rather than confronting dangerous messages and disinformation.

WASHINGTON — Knute Buehler, who led Oregon’s Republican ticket as the candidate for governor in 2018, watched with growing alarm in recent weeks as Republicans around the nation challenged the reliability of the presidential election results.

Then he watched the Jan. 6 siege at the United States Capitol in horror. And then, to his astonishment, Republican Party officials in his own state embraced the conspiracy theory that the attack was actually a left-wing “false flag” plot to frame Trump supporters.

The night after his party’s leadership passed a formal resolution promoting the false flag theory, Mr. Buehler cracked open a local microbrew and filed to change his registration from Republican to independent. “It was very painful,” he said. Continue reading.