“The Most Fringe Elements of the GOP Are in Control”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Returning to the state of U.S. politics as the Republican majority navigates a narrowly divided House and its own divided party. With extreme election deniers assigned to key committees this week, is there a place for pragmatic Republicans in this Congress? Charlie Sykes, a conservative commenter, an editor-at-large of the political website, “The Bulwark” joins Michel Martin to break down the current GOP landscape.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Charlie Sykes, thanks so much for talking with us.

CHARLIE SYKES, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, THE BULWARK: Thank you.

MARTIN: So, let’s talk about where we are now. We’re two years after the anniversary of the mob attack on the Capitol.

SYKES: Right.

MARTIN: The intention of which was to, you know, essentially overthrow the government, OK.

SYKES: Yes.

MARTIN: You know, the Republicans took control of the house.

SYKES: Yes, they did.

MARTIN: They did after a lot of toing-and-froing, eventually, kind of, settle on Kevin McCarthy as their leader. But a lot of people who had been considered, you know — I don’t know how to say it, like, other than fringe players in previous Congresses have now been given positions of responsibility. And I just wonder how you put all that together. When you look at the totality of that, what do you see?

SYKES: Well, I mean, that last point you made, I think is what is so crucial. Is the way in which the fringe has become mainstream. Look, you’ve always had cranks and cracked pots in the conservative movement, they’ve always been at the far reaches of the fever swamp. What’s really changed is that now you have figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, who are not only in the mainstream, but are actually playing major roles in the House of Representatives. So, you know, the election was certainly not as bad as I think a lot of people believed. But let’s be honest, here’s the reality check, even though many of the worst election deniers were defeated, and many of the most intense MAGA superstars went down to defeat. The reality is that the Republicans did take control of the house. They do control the gavels. They do control the subpoenas — subpoena power, and as we have seen with the election of Kevin McCarthy. The most fringe elements of the party are now in control. They now dominate. So, I think the January 6th should have been the inflection point where everybody in the Republican Party should have looked at another and said, OK, this is crazy. This is insane. This is clearly not what we stand for. It is not conservative to try to overthrow the government and then to take the off ramp. Instead, two years afterwards, the party that went along with many of the big lies and refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory is now in charge. And many of those committees in the House of Representatives are now run by people who were deeply involved in January 6th or who voted not to certify the election. So, there is some good news. But to think that somehow the crisis has passed, or that the fever has broken, I think would be highly– would be extremely naive.

MARTIN: Why do you think that is? How do you think that happened? Like, what happened?

SYKES: Well, you know, it happened gradually and then all at once, you know. The biggest mistake, and the thing that I most regret, of course, is the fact that we did ignore the extremist elements in the party in part because I think that there was the complacency that these were, you know, these were like your drunken bigoted uncle at Thanksgiving. You could roll your eyes, but that somehow the sane center would prevail. We regarded this as, sort of, a recessive gene. Well, it turned out this recessive gene is dominant. But the point you just made is really significant. Because as recently as 2019, the Republicans did understand there were still red lines and there were needs to — there was a need to police themselves. So, Steve King was flirting with white supremacy in 2019, well into the Trump-era. And Republicans hesitated only briefly before saying, no, this is not who we are. We are going to expel him from the committee. And he was really, eventually, consigned to political oblivion. Now, fast forward to today where you have people who have consorted with white supremacists, like Paul Gosar, who have engaged in conspiracy theories and, you know, antisemitic fantasies about Jewish space lasers, like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And they are not only not being exiled, they are being promoted and put into these key positions. So, clearly something has changed. And part of this has been the acceleration of the things that I wrote back in 2016. The growth of an alternative reality universe, a right-wing mini-ecosystem. The entertainment wing of the Republican Party, which has clearly become dominant. And it’s changed all of the incentive structure. So, it used to be that there was — you know, there was a leadership in the party that could say, look, this is inappropriate behavior and you need to stop that. Well, there is no leadership structure. There is no establishment that has that kind of control. Right now, the perpetual outrage machines of many of these third-party groups are much more dominant in terms of the money they can raise, the attention they can give, and the kind of celebrity. So, Marjorie Taylor Greene, rather than being cast out can, like Steve King, can go on Fox News. She can go on Newsmax or OAN, and she can turn to small donor — small donors and raise millions of dollars. And this is the source of her power right now. So, this is one of the reasons why someone like a Kevin McCarthy has to negotiate and give away so much of his power. That’s why he needs to appease the crazies in his caucus because the locust of power and money and celebrity has continued to shift drastically and dramatically in the era of Trump.

MARTIN: Well, why don’t people who have a more, sort of, demonstrated interest in governing step forward? It’s — it would seem that they, as a group, could exert some influence?

SYKES: Well, why haven’t they done it over the last five or six years? I mean, that’s been the story of the Republican Party. Look, there are still moderates in the House of Representative and in the Republican Party. But the problem is, they continue to empower the extremes. They will not go to the mat for their principles the way that the freedom caucus was willing to go to the mat for their caucus.So — I mean, that’s the real question. Well, yes, there are moderates but when will they take a stand. Now, to take a stand in this particular conference risks political oblivion. You ask, you know, why won’t they — you know, why won’t they take governing seriously? Well, does that mean working with Democrats? Does that mean making compromises? If they do, they run the risk of following Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney into retirement, that’s the way that they conceptualize that. Because the pressure to go along, to get along is so intense. So, I think this is going to be one of the most important things to watch. Because there are quite a few members of this Republican conference that represent districts that were won by Joe Biden. Who ran as centrist, who ran as moderates. But will it matter in the end? Will they, for example, break with the leadership if it looks like the Republicans are going to take the country over the brink on not raising the debt ceiling?

MARTIN: Uh-huh.

SYKES: Will they stand up against some of the most extreme legislation? So far, as you just pointed out, they haven’t done it. And this has been the story going back, frankly to Paul Ryan’s speakership. Paul Ryan was certainly not a Trumpist, but ultimately, he decided that he was going to make that fusty and bargained with Trumpism. And since that moment, that’s been the story for the vast majority of Republicans in elected office.

MARTIN: So, you said an early test is the debt ceiling —

SYKES: Yes.

MARTIN: — dilemma. The fact is the party’s — the White House have to agree on what happens next, or the U.S. could default.

SYKES: Yes.

MARTIN: I mean, that sounds like a remarkable thing for the world’s largest economy to even, sort of, consider.

SYKES: Right.

MARTIN: But the — I don’t know how to describe it. You know, the hardliners, as it were, are demanding some severe, you know, cuts in spending. You know, it’s interesting, given such a narrow majority in one house of the Congress, but to be demanding some really, sort of, drastic policy in you know, changes, but they are.

SYKES: Yes, they are.

MARTIN: And so, you know, how should the other side response to that or what would you like to see?

SYKES: Well, look, people ought to have no illusions that defaulting on the debt would be catastrophic. It would be catastrophic for the economy, for the country, for the markets. It might create a global financial crisis. It would shut down the federal government. And as I wrote earlier this week, I don’t think there’s anything less conservative than reneging on your debt or shutting down the government that you are entrusted to keep running, and yet that’s where we are here. Now, this is not a new idea.

MARTIN: Uh-huh.

SYKES: I mean, Republicans have been flirting with this since 2011. But back in — and that did a lot of damage. But remember that back then, saner, calmer heads prevailed. I’m not sure that’s going to happen this time because I think this is going to be the litmus test. The entire media ecosystem on the right will be geared out to put pressure on Republicans to not compromise. Kevin McCarthy may have made concessions that make compromise impossible. We don’t know all the things that he gave away. But we know that he made promises to the freedom caucus. My greatest fear is that any Republican that wants to be grown-up, wants to do the responsible thing will be labeled a traitor, a cock (ph), a rhino (ph). And that if they were to, you know, sign on to a motion of discharge or any sort of a deal with the Biden White House, that they would be immediately targeted by fellow Republicans. It would guarantee that they would have a primary. That voting to compromise with the Biden White House would have the same political implications of voting to impeach Donald Trump. We know how Republicans reacted to all of that. So, then the question is, well, how can we get through all of this? And we don’t know. This is also a measure of how radicalized the Republican Party has gotten. And even though they didn’t do well in the midterms, the reality is, they control the House. They can — they cannot pass anything as long as Joe Biden’s in the White House, and Democrats control the Senate. But they can do a great deal of damage, and that’s the thing to keep your eye on. I mean, a lot of what you were going to see, they’ll do a lot of investigations, there’ll be a lot of performative bills passed to throw red meat to the base. But the real meat of this is that the main event, the 2023 is going to be, will they crashed the economy? Will they shut the government down? And I have to tell you, I’m not optimistic.

MARTIN: You know, if they were — if that were to occur, these would be real world consequences that people — you couldn’t just necessarily explain away with a lot of tweets, and you know, even with — sort of, a combined, you know, power of the conservative media universe. You can’t explain away your 401(k) tanking. You can’t explain away your, you know — you know, all of the things —

SYKES: Right.

MARTIN: — that people would experience. How would people react to that? I mean, do you think that that kind of reality check might be enough to get people to take their public responsibilities more seriously?

SYKES: Well, I hope so. The problem of the Republican Party right now is not just the elected officials. In fact, the problem is the voters who are sending these kinds of people to Washington. And as long as the Republican primary voter likes this sort of thing, wants the chaos, wants to burn it all down, that is what they will get. But this will be the ultimate reality test. And it’s one of the reasons why politicians, you know, with all of the — you know, sound and the fury ultimately never actually pull the trigger on defaulting on the debt because everybody knows it would be catastrophic. But in a game of political, fiscal, chicken (ph) like this, what if they don’t swerve? What if it does lead to a crash. But it will be a political reality check. Look, this is also where, I think, the Republican Party faces a huge problem in 2023. Because they are going to be the party that is going to endanger the economy in order to have massive spending cuts for programs that are quite popular even among Republicans. I mean, with all of this, you know, born again fiscal conservatism — in which, by the way, they didn’t care about during the Trump years when we get trillions of dollars to the debt. But all this born-again fiscal conservatism ignores the fact that the public — even Republican voters do not want to cut social security. They don’t want to cut Medicare. Many of these other programs have large constituency. And yet, this is what the Republicans are holding the country hostage for. So, that’s a problem. The other problem is that because Kevin McCarthy has made all of these bargains, and these deals, and these surrenders. The public face of the Republican Party is going to be people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar and George Santos. And many of the other people who are — you know, when Americans finally tune in and say, who are these people? Who is running the country? What does the Republican Party stand for? Instead of putting forward a rational and reasonable face, what is Kevin McCarthy’s party going to look like six months from now and nine months from now? It is — it’s a bizarre moment that we’ve been leading to for, I’m afraid, quite some time now. But it’s going to all come to ahead, I think, sometime this year.

MARTIN: I am curious though about Mitch McConnell. What role, do you think, that the Senate Republican leader is playing right now and will be playing? I mean, I will say that President Biden has made it clear that he is going to return to certain norms.

SYKES: OK.

MARTIN: That maybe not seem like a big deal outside of Washington.

SYKES: Yes.

MARTIN: But inviting members of the other party to a state dinner, for example —

SYKES: Right.

MARTIN: The prior administration completely ignored that custom.

SYKES: Yes.

MARTIN: And in his initial state dinners, the president has made it — you know, has made sure to invite people from both political parties. He actually appeared with the Senate Republican leader at an event.

SYKES: Yes.

MARTIN: He’s appeared with Ron DeSantis, for example, the governor of Florida.

SYKES: Uh-huh.

MARTIN: He’s appeared with the governor of Texas. I think I’m more interested in what you make of Mitch McConnell’s role in this because President Biden has made it clear that that’s what he’s going to try to do. He’s going to try to model the behavior he wants to see, whether people like it or not.

SYKES: Yes.

MARTIN: And what about Mitch McConnell?

SYKES: You know, I think the relationship between Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell, and Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy is going to be one of the most fascinating things to watch because McConnell’s, you know, all out of bleach to give when it comes to the Donald Trump. I think — you know, Donald Trump continues to attack him, you know, throws out, tosses out racial slurs about his wife. So, Mitch McConnell has a completely different relationship to both to governance and to the other parties. So, there’s going to be a triangulation. I mean, I think that one of the most interesting moments of the year, so far, was when the House was going through all of those failed votes to elect Kevin McCarthy. When the House Republicans were incomplete disarray. And where was Mitch McConnell? He was down in Kentucky with Joe Biden at a bipartisan infrastructure meeting. I mean, that was the signal that he wanted to distance himself from that. That he was playing a different game. So — but Mitch McConnell, what he wants to be, can be, you know, a world- class obstructionist. But maybe he’ll play a different role. We don’t know. But if you’re Joe Biden, it’s going to be much easier to deal with Mitch McConnell than it is with Kevin McCarthy. I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear the conversations between Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, especially when Kevin McCarthy has to admit that, hey, you know, I would like to do this. But you know, I’ve given away all of my power. I can’t do anything. I am a completely hollow man when it comes to being speaker. That’s going to be interesting.

MARTIN: Do you have any sympathy for Kevin McCarthy?

SYKES: I have literally no sympathy for Kevin McCarthy. I mean, Kevin McCarthy basically has put his own personal ambition and vanity ahead of the country. And I think that that’s one of the cardinal political sins. Kevin McCarthy decided that he wanted to be speaker. He wanted to have that portrait. He wanted to have that gavel. So much that he was willing to make himself, his party, and the entire House of Representatives hostage to the least responsible, most reckless members of that party. So, no, I don’t. He weakened himself. He humiliated himself. And for what? We’re going to see how long that lasts.

MARTIN: Uh-huh. Charlie Sykes, thank you so much for talking with us.

SYKES: Thank you.