With less than six months until the November election, some Republicans in Congress are trying to distance themselves from their more extreme members.
But there’s only so much they can do with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket.
The dissonance was on display this week as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene mounted a kamikaze mission to remove rookie House Speaker Mike Johnson.
As Greene rose to speak on Wednesday, some Republicans heckled and booed her.
As Greene rose to speak on Wednesday, some Republicans heckled and booed her, and an overwhelming majority made up of Republicans and Democrats voted to table her motion to vacate the speaker’s chair. At an impromptu news conference, a group of self-described “mainstream Republicans” sought to distance themselves from the shenanigans.
“You can be productive, or you can be destructive,” said South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson. “Ms. Taylor Greene is choosing destructive.”
New York Rep. Mike Lawler was more succinct: “Moscow Marjorie has clearly gone off the deep end.”
Even as the House was rejecting Greene’s fools-errand resolution, there were other signs this week of Republicans trying to reclaim a party that has gone off the rails since 2015.
One hint came on Tuesday in Indiana, where former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley won nearly 22% of the vote in the Republican presidential primary despite having dropped out — and pretty much disappeared from the public eye — more than two months ago. In the battleground of Pennsylvania last month, Haley won nearly 17% of the vote — earning more votes than Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state in 2020.
In all, Haley has earned more than a million votes in various Republican primaries since exiting the race. That’s not because she’s a particularly compelling candidate, but because a good number of Republicans are frustrated with the direction of the party.
Some Republican politicians have also voiced their discontent. Former Speaker Paul Ryan came forward this week to say he would write in another Republican instead of Trump. The former lieutenant governor of Georgia went one step further. In a column published Monday in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Republican Geoff Duncan announced he will vote for Biden instead of “a criminal defendant without a moral compass.”
Still, these remain voices in the wilderness, as the majority of the GOP remains in thrall to Trump.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott even went to court on Thursday as a show of support.
Even as he stands trial in New York over hush money payments to an adult film star, Trump remains the standard-bearer for the Republican Party, which mostly echoes his claims of political persecution, or at least doesn’t refute them. Florida Sen. Rick Scott even went to court on Thursday as a show of support, standing before cameras outside to call prosecutors “political thugs” and attack the judge’s family members — things Trump himself is barred from saying under a gag order.
Trump, meantime, holds a slim lead over Biden in polls of battleground states, likely a main reason why so many Republican elected officials don’t speak out. That may be one reason they turned so loudly on Greene, whose attempt at deposing the speaker was even criticized by Trump.
The lesson for House Republicans? They wouldn’t have to deal with Greene’s distractions if they stood up to Donald Trump a long time ago. Enabling Trump got them to this point. And while criticizing Greene probably felt good in the moment, it leaves them open to the question of why they don’t say anything similar about Trump as he proposes pitching the U.S. even further into dysfunction.
For more thought-provoking insights from Alicia Menendez, Michael Steele and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weekend” every Saturday and Sunday at 8 a.m. ET on MSNBC.
Lynox Norman contributed.
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