Across the country, Republican leaders are reacting to Trump's exit by intensifying the political revolution that transformed the party in his image, censuring and marginalizing those deemed disloyal to a defeated and twice-impeached ex-President.
In a key impeachment test vote this week, 45 GOP senators signaled that they plan for Trump to pay no price for inciting the most heinous assault by a president on the US government in history in the Capitol riot.
McCarthy, who humiliatingly walked back his earlier tepid criticism of Trump,
has traveled to Florida for an audience as he seeks to make amends to the former leader in his palace in exile.
In another sign of the GOP's future course, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was not censured by her party after
CNN's KFile reported that she expressed supporting in recent years assassinations of Democratic leaders before she ran for Congress. McCarthy plans to have a word with the congresswoman over what his spokesman in a statement Wednesday evening called the "deeply disturbing" comments.
Axios was first to report the statement and McCarthy's plans to speak with Greene.
But the QAnon adherent's rocketing rise as a prominent face of a party in the thrall of lies and outlandish propaganda does not seem in danger. In fact, Greene, was rewarded with a plum committee assignment.
Alarmed by splits in his party, McCarthy has ordered his troops to "cut that crap out" and focus on Democrats,
CNN reported Wednesday. It is not clear whether his admonition applies to pro-Trump Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who is traveling to Wyoming to slam the GOP's No. 3 House leader Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump, on her own turf.
Remnants of the old GOP -- such as former George W. Bush aide Rob Portman -- who are unwilling to sign up to the unhinged populism that now drives the party of Lincoln have nowhere to go. The Ohio senator announced this week that he will not run for reelection.
Kinzinger
told CNN's David Axelrod in his "Axe Files" podcast that he voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol Hill uprising "knowing full well it could very well be terminal to my career."
But in Arkansas, former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is wearing her wars with the Washington media in her dishonest tenure as a badge of honor to appeal to the fervidly pro-Trump base in a gubernatorial run.
And in Arizona, Oregon and Pennsylvania, anti-Trump Republicans such as Cindy McCain are being purged while Trump loyalists take prominent positions and state officials who stood firm against the former President's efforts to overturn Biden's election win come under extreme pressure.
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