Analysis: Republicans’ extreme reaction to Biden’s big speech helps make his point

CNN  — 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders may have a point – America’s new political choice really could be between “normal or crazy.”

But after a wild week in Washington, it’s fair to ask who is on each side of the line the Arkansas governor drew in her Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

Two days later, it seems Republicans triggered their own trap.

The unspoken purpose of Biden’s theatrical delivery on Tuesday night, and much of his presidency, is to ask Americans who the real extremists are. And the GOP’s behavior before, during and after his big night appears to be offering an emphatic answer – to moderate voters at least – as Republicans tolerate election deniers and use their investigatory muscle on topics that aren’t top of mind for most Americans.

Sanders spoke moments after Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was on her feet yelling “liar” at Biden, with the House chamber sounding more like a heckler-filled late-night comedy club than a solemn state occasion. New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was seen trying to shush his ruder lawmakers, but he was among those Republicans who voted not to certify Biden’s 2020 election victory over false claims of fraud. And it was McCarthy who embraced ex-President Donald Trump after his baseless claims of a stolen election incited an unprecedented insurrection at the US Capitol. More recently, he appeased untamed elements of his party to squeeze into power last month.

The new House majority is also grappling with the distraction of serial fabulist George Santos, the New York congressman who was caught lying about his education, his job resume and his family background. His fellow New York Republican, freshman Rep. Nick LaLota, told CNN on Wednesday, “Every time I have to come to something like this and talk about George Santos, I can’t talk about what Republicans ought to be doing instead.”

Meanwhile, new Republican-led oversight hearings – including one on Wednesday apparently designed to prove that some combination of Twitter, the FBI and Biden stole the 2020 election – have further erased the line between conservative opinion TV and governance. The all-day session featured the kind of histrionic questioning and grandstanding, which verged on bullying of the witnesses, that delights the GOP’s base and runs on a loop on right-wing media. But if anything, it undermined the premise that a massive media, deep-state swamp conspired against Trump as witnesses testified that there was no order from the FBI to temporarily suppress a New York Post story about a laptop purportedly belonging to the president’s son, Hunter. Another House hearing on Thursday, the first of a series into the alleged “weaponization” of the government against conservatives, will again fuel an impression the GOP is trying to build scandals from right-wing talking points.

While such showdowns allow party leaders to fire up vital base voters and cook up a general stench of scandal that, even if unproven, could harm the Biden administration, they risk highlighting the GOP’s most extreme, media-hungry personalities and alienating moderate voters.

Of course, political normality is in the eye of the beholder. Sanders argued that Biden had surrendered to a “woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is” and that the country is in the grip of a left-wing cultural purge.

The GOP used the national television audience to recommit to the hardline “Make America Great Again” base strategy pushed by Trump, whom Sanders served as press secretary in the White House. But her strategy did not come in isolation. For many conservatives, liberal policies on social, economic and foreign policy may well be viewed as “crazy.” And Democrats have had their own issues with extremists in recent years, including left-wingers who once called for “defunding the police” – a position that turned into a huge political liability for their party in successive elections.

But while Sanders may be adopting a shrewd approach for a rising star in a party that often rewards far-right candidates in primaries, it would seem to fly in the face of lessons of the midterm elections, when voters in swing states rejected far-right extremism.

Some Republicans may feel aggrieved at Biden’s claim they want to sunset Social Security and Medicare, especially since McCarthy has said that’s not on the table in debt ceiling talks, although some prominent Republicans have suggested such a step. And McCarthy’s comment on Fox that it was one of the most partisan State of the Union addresses he’d ever heard was not totally wide of the mark.

But the president again positioned himself as the bulwark between more moderate Americans and the excess of what he has called “ultra MAGA” Republicans – a tactic he used especially successfully in the midterms.

This is why Biden’s strategy goaded McCarthy’s most radical followers into acting out on Tuesday night after saying Americans didn’t want to see fighting in Congress.

McCarthy, meanwhile, dodged efforts from reporters to get him to comment on the performance of Greene, with whom he has developed a strong political relationship. While he had hoped to avoid a public spectacle of extremism with millions watching on TV, his hopes of keeping his job long term rely on radicals like Greene and her wilder colleagues. This narrow grip on power thanks to a minuscule majority is one reason why McCarthy has also not repudiated Santos, who is expected to face a House ethics probe.

The sight of an apparently weak speaker unable to keep order in the chamber as Biden spoke – a scene that encapsulated the collapse of civility in the Trump-era of GOP politics – bodes ill for the future. Tuesday’s performance seeded new doubts that – even if McCarthy could somehow reach a deal with Biden on cutting spending in return for lifting the government’s borrowing limit – the California Republican would be able to sell anything but an absolutist position to his members on a clash that threatens to pitch the US economy into a crisis.

Greene told CNN’s Manu Raju on Wednesday that she wasn’t sorry for her poor manners during Biden’s speech, even though she provided Democrats with the exact image they most want to highlight. She said she was “pissed off” and “I don’t clap for liars.” Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN on Tuesday night that Greene’s antics encapsulated a choice for Americans between “chaos” and “stability.”

Not every Republican is tolerating the party’s incivility. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney went where McCarthy has failed to go, telling Santos he had no place in the House. LaLota, meanwhile, in his interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, stressed how the New York Republican had become a distraction from the party’s priorities.

“We want to talk about putting our economy back on the right track, securing our border, hold the administration accountable – these are the things that Republicans campaigned on, these are the things that Republicans want to govern on,” LaLota said.

Given the Biden White House’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Covid-19 pandemic and the border crisis, there is plenty for House Republican chairmen to sink their teeth into. There is no reason why a genuine investigation into Biden’s finances – and those of his son, who is under federal investigation – should not be part of this oversight either.

But Wednesday’s House Oversight hearing showed how politicized the investigations have already become, and raised questions about the underlying question at issue: claims that the FBI forced Twitter to temporarily block users from sharing a New York Post story in 2020 regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop.

House Oversight Chair James Comer warned of a “coordinated cover-up by Big Tech, the Swamp, and mainstream news” to suppress a story that could hurt Biden.

Former senior officials from Twitter admitted that the social media network made a mistake in suppressing the story – on the grounds that they were worried it was based on the same kind of foreign misinformation that had tainted the 2016 election. But they repeatedly testified that they had received no orders from the FBI to do so, undermining claims by top Republicans that the bureau tried to censor a story that could hurt Biden in the election.

The hearing also appeared to be partially rooted in a misperception that a private company is infringing First Amendment free speech protections if it chooses not to carry certain material on its platform. The supposed case also rested on documents released by the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, which Republicans say prove there was collusion between the company and the FBI. But the material doesn’t appear to prove that contention. CNN has reported that the allegations are unsupported and a half-dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, also denied any such directive was given.

Still, the lack of a smoking gun doesn’t mean the hearing was a waste of time for some Republicans trying to cloud the Biden administration in the appearance of scandal. Members did tease out that some Twitter executives disdained Trump, even if they didn’t suppress the story for political reasons. And for members like Greene and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, berating supposed deep-state witnesses keeps the clicks coming on conservative media and the fundraising machine turning.