Kevin McCarthy’s allies may imperil his speakership more than his opponents

Sometimes your friends are more dangerous than your enemies, and such is likely to be the case for newly minted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Much has been made of the post-weakening concessions far-right Republican holdouts extracted from him.

Still, an adroit and able leader should be able to outmaneuver her or his intraparty adversaries. Whether McCarthy can is an entirely different matter. Regardless, when it comes to his prospects for staying in power beyond one term, the House members the new speaker counts as close allies present a bigger risk.

It would take a team of psychiatrists working around the clock for a month to render an authoritative ruling about who is the nuttiest member in the House chamber. But Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia would surely be in the top five.

A former QAnon follower, Greene says she no longer believes in the idiotic conspiracy theory that former president Donald Trump was battling a cannibalistic cabal of Satanworshipping child-sex traffickers.

Progress to be sure. But she is also the one who, back in 2018, suggested on Facebook that a space laser controlled by the Rothschilds had caused that fall’s forest fires in California. Who believes something like that, let alone posts it on social media? Or signals belief in the insane assertion that Hillary Clinton and former top aide Huma Abedin sexually assaulted a child, sliced her face off, and then wore it as a mask? Or suggests Nancy Pelosi should be executed for treason? What sort of bigot speaks at a conference put on by white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, as Greene did just last year?

How far beyond the pale are her beliefs? Well, when Lauren Boebert of Colorado, no piker as a hard-right adherent to conspiracy theories, declares that Greene seems unhinged, it should tell you something.

Greene has said she will play a big role under McCarthy, who will give her “a lot of power and a lot of leeway,” and at least from what we’ve seen so far, there’s little reason to doubt her.

So what will she do with the power? One thing she wants to do is to push to impeach President Biden, though for no reason that makes sense outside of the pixilated precincts of wackadoodle world.

If her formal role is as yet undetermined, that’s not the case with US Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a hard-right Trump loyalist and political brawler who puts the pursuit of partisan advantage over anything remotely resembling serious governance or oversight.

He will oversee a subcommittee to probe the supposed “weaponization of the federal government,” by which Republicans mean, among other things, the Department of Justice’s investigation of Trump for his attempt to overturn the November 2020 election results and the federal prosecution of the MAGA mob that stormed the US Capitol.

Several huge problems loom here. In its final report, the Jan. 6 committee identified Jordan as “a significant player” in Trump’s election-subversion attempts. He forwarded a scheme for overturning the election to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, led a conference-call discussion of ways to delay Congress’s Jan. 6 certification of the Electoral College vote, and spoke to the then president at least twice on Jan. 6. When asked when or how many times they talked that day, Jordan does an uncanny impersonation of a flustered squirrel.

The Ohio right-winger refused a subpoena to testify before the Jan. 6 committee and, for that, has been referred to the House Ethics Committee. (So, too, has McCarthy, of course.) Under Republicans, that referral will no doubt go nowhere beyond the circular file. Still, given that history, how can Jordan credibly head an investigative panel? In particular, how can someone who refused to cooperate with the Jan. 6 investigation oversee a congressional probe of the DOJ’s investigation thereof ? How can someone who himself refused a congressional committee’s subpoena compel other reluctant witnesses to testify?

The hyper partisan conspiratorial ism that so animates Jordan will no doubt please the prime-time Fox News ideologues and play well with Trump’s MAGA base. Recall, however, that we have now had a couple of detailed inquires, including special counsel John Durham’s probe, that conservatives hoped would reveal illegitimate, Deep State efforts to undermine, impede, and investigate Trump. They turned up nothing remotely resembling those wild imaginings.

Now, let’s be clear. Constructive congressional oversight is always appropriate. But by empowering Jordan and Greene, McCarthy will enable two ideological zealots intent on marching House Republicans squarely into the fever swamps.

Does anyone seriously think that’s what mainstream Americans wanted when they voted in November?