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“The last three decades have seen an endless succession of coups, scandals, and humiliations, at times reducing the position of Speaker of the House to a hollowed-out title hardly anybody of note even wanted to claim. By this point, the rituals of plotting and counterplotting are so deeply ingrained that every new Republican Speaker is greeted with built-in opposition and ready speculation as to who will take over as the next Speaker after the newly inaugurated one is inevitably deposed. … The congressional Republican fratricide era began with the rise of Newt Gingrich (more on him shortly). But its intellectual roots stretch back to the early 1960s, when the upstart conservative movement first crawled out of the primordial ooze and set out to seize control of the party.”
“If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like. It should set off alarm bells that something is not right.”
— Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University, quoted by the Washington Post.
+$1 million
Atlanta Journal Constitution: “In all, the Georgia GOP has spent more than $1 million on legal fees since the beginning of last year, most of it for the Trump election interference case.”
“In a grievance-filled news conference after he announced his decision not to try to get his job back, McCarthy said, with dark humor: ‘I made history, didn’t I?’ Indeed, he has left a mark — a scar on the institution and the office — that will be hard to erase.”
