Mark Kenny | Kevin McCarthy House Speaker chaos shows radical turn for conservatives

If Republican ambivalence in the two years since was not shocking enough, events in Congress in the last few days remind us that religious fundamentalists don't actually need to break glass or even hold a majority to dictate to both party and country.

The wrecking tactics of what some are calling the "mega MAGAs" - committed make-America-great-again Trumpists who are now out-crazying their hero - lay bare the true agenda of 21st century American Fascism.

That is, a hardline movement which craves absolute power and observes democratic norms only insofar as they provide a visible path to it.

United around ideas of race, guns, and a perverted Christian uniformity, this group eschews pluralism and detests rule-of-law liberalism with its secular authorities. And it effectively owns the Grand Old Party.

Genuine Australian conservatives take note because the same mechanisms - even if less overtly ideological - are already shifting centre-right internals here as religious radicals exercise outsized influence.

In politics, it pays to look at not just what is said, but why, and often more importantly, when.

Consider the purpose of the Nationals' formal opposition to the Voice way back in November.

Patently, it was unnecessary and premature. Coming months before arguments were put, a referendum date set, and the wording of the question finalised, the junior party's announcement was the very definition of prejudice. Its intention was to kill off any (remote) possibility of Peter Dutton advocating Liberal party room or even Coalition support for the referendum question.

As a conservative LNP member himself, Dutton knows the Liberal Party is beholden to the same Queensland right wing as the Nats. Thus, any moderate collaboration with Labor on First Nations recognition would split the Coalition and no doubt end his leadership.

Well before Labor's resurgence, there had been an increasing prevalence within the Liberals of overt and covert religious candidates seeking elected office.

Some were exposed before the Victorian state election including one candidate who was so affronted by Labor's free kindergarten that he let slip he was against kindergarten itself. Others may have slipped in more quietly.

And let's not forget that a religiously strange right-winger was recently evicted from The Lodge, the full extent of his dangerous beliefs downplayed.

Speaking less than two months after his defeat at a Pentecostal church infamous for its social backwardness (otherwise known as bigotry), Scott Morrison explained where Australian confidence was best directed - God. "We trust in him. We don't trust in governments. We don't trust in United Nations, thank goodness."

On that score at least, the dumped PM with a messiah complex was privy to some relevant inside dope. After all, the 30th PM had done more to deceive voters, Parliament, and his own party than any predecessor.

Back to the debacle in America where a 20-strong extremist rump from the Freedom Caucus and containing an even more hardline group called "Never Kevins" spent most of last week holding their own party hostage by blocking the election of Republican candidate for House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

Amid the student politics level bastardry, Republic Matt Gaetz even nominated "Donald John Trump" for Speaker.

By Australian (and most European standards), McCarthy is a deeply conservative figure. Yet he is despised as liberal collaborator by Trumpist fanatics who cite his past preparedness to negotiate with Democrats to get legislation through.

At the time of writing, there had been a record 13 failed votes on the floor of the House despite the GOP holding a narrow majority since the midterms. A 14th was expected to finally get McCarthy over the line after ceding major powers but it will have been the longest selection process in 164 years.

Already, some say McCarthy's leadership has ended before it began.

Joe Biden, bringing his usual garden hose to a house fire, said it was "embarrassing" for the country.

It is certainly that. But it portends something far worse than a loss of face - the open abandonment of core tenets of the democratic republic itself.

Democrat Jim McGovern was incisive. "It is ludicrous that this group of people who have cheered on [Januray 6] insurrectionists, who have embraced racist and bigoted legislation are going to be calling the shots".

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Even Trump, the only declared GOP presidential hopeful for 2024, and therefore someone who desperately needs the party to remain functionally intact, had tried to hose things down.

Using his own network, Truth Social, the disgraced former president counselled restraint: "Republicans, do not turn a great triumph into a giant and embarrassing defeat. It's time to celebrate, you deserve it. Kevin McCarthy will do a good job, and maybe even a great job - just watch," he wrote.

Hint. When you're being talked off the ledge of extreme political madness by Trump, you might just have gone too far.

American scholar Norman Ornstein argues the traditional political terminology has been gazumped by GOP realties.

"There are no moderates! There are traditional conservatives, you could call some of them pragmatists, but not moderates. There are conservatives and radicals. Period. It normalizes an abnormal party to frame this as moderates vs conservatives, or moderates vs the right wing".

For the Liberal Party of Australia which was struggling to show a liberal pulse even before its "moderates" were defeated last May, these are interesting distinctions.