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Call it the Conspiracy Theory Congress: Things are about to get dangerously weird on Capitol Hill
With Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, House Republicans gear up to wage a two year war on reality itself

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED JANUARY 9, 2023 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) Well, Ol' Ironbutt finally did it: After 14 humiliating votes, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. sucked all the humor out of the Capitol and squeaked into the Speakership on the 15th try, in the dead of night, the proper hour for all shameful moments. Just to make this denouement even more depressing, Republican members of Congress made the disappointing choice to stop Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., in what was the only useful urge he's had in his life, from issuing a beatdown to Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

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While the clown show has been highly entertaining to anyone not named Kevin McCarthy, in all the ways that truly matter, it's been irrelevant. As Heather "Digby" Parton noted Friday at Salon, the members of the insurrectionist caucus "already run everything." That was true long before Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida decided to head up the "Humiliate Kevin" fund-raising scheme. It was true last year, when McCarthy cozied up to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, cementing the QAnon-loving congresswoman as one of the most powerful people on Capitol Hill. It was true when McCarthy tried to get Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on the January 6 committee because he thought Jordan possessed the necessary lying skills to cover for Trump's guilt. It was true even on January 6, 2021, when McCarthy joined 146 other House Republicans to vote to de-certify the 2020 election, even after Donald Trump sent a murderous mob to the Capitol. The media covered the Speaker fight as one between McCarthy and "election deniers," but in truth, McCarthy should be considered an election denier himself.

In a very real sense, the silly drama over the Speaker election has distracted from a larger, more disturbing truth: House Republicans are going to spend the next two years using taxpayer money to wage war on not just democracy, but truth itself. The antics of various House committees, as they work hand-in-glove with Fox News to create and disseminate right wing conspiracy theories, will make an epsiode of Infowars seem downright sober-minded.

As Crooked editor Brian Beutler noted in his latest "Big Tent" newsletter, the insurrectionist caucus differs from the radical right wingers of GOP caucuses past, whose goals were to "gut Medicare, defund the Affordable Care Act, etc." Instead, these new Republican radicals "want to steal elections. They want to sabotage criminal investigations that implicate themselves, Donald Trump, and January 6 defendants, current and future." Having realized that they'll likely never get their desired ends through democratic means, they've determined democracy itself must go. And make no mistake: McCarthy and other GOP leaders are only too happy to go along with the program. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/01/09/call-it-the-conspiracy-theory-congress-things-are-about-to-get-dangerously-weird-on-capitol-hill/