A fractured Republican Party is gearing up to take the reins of the House of Representatives. The White House is now doing something it resisted early in office: taking on the more extreme members of the GOP.
Over the past few months, President Joe Biden and top aides have become much more inclined to call out radical Republicans in hopes of tarring the GOP and dividing the party even further.
This comes as a departure from Biden’s first year in office when it was an informal administration policy not to mention some of those very Republican members out of a belief that there was less of a need to fight with “bit players.”
But now as Congress is in its lame-duck period, the White House has unleashed attacks on lawmakers like a right-wing conspiracy theorist and controversial congressperson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)
The White House has tried to turn Greene into the poster child of the incoming House GOP majority.
According to allies and aides in the White House, there was not one moment when the strategy shifted. Instead, it was a reaction to the fringe members becoming more prominent and Republican leadership ignoring the worst offenders.
The Republican Party on the whole has leaned harder to the right in the age of Donald Trump with some of his most faithful disciples becoming stars of the party. This includes Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), and Greene.
The conservative fringe of the GOP is threatening to break away from the main bloc of the party. Many expect the new GOP leader Kevin McCarthy will have no choice but to offer the hardcore right-wing members prominent posts in exchange for their support.
White House aides believe it will be much easier to make them the faces of the opposition, turning off voters who might find some of those views as too extreme.
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