Republicans fight over speaker of the House – but whoever wins, the party loses | Robert Reich

On Tuesday, as Republicans in the US House of Representatives convulse over electing one among them as speaker of the House, with Kevin McCarthy attempting to outmanoeuvre his hardcore Maga detractors, the civil war in the Republican party comes into the open.

But it's not particularly civil and it's not exactly a war. It's the mindless hostility of a political party that's lost any legitimate reason for being.

For all practical purposes, the Republican party is over.

A half century ago, the Republican party stood for limited government. Its position was not always coherent or logical (it overlooked corporate power and resisted civil rights), but at least had a certain consistency: the party could always be relied on to seek lower taxes and oppose Democratic attempts to enlarge the scope of federal power.

This was, and still is, the position of the establishment Republican party of the two George Bushes, of its wealthy libertarian funders and of its Davos-jetting corporate executive donor base. But it has little to do with the real Republican party of today.

In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich and Fox News's Roger Ailes ushered the Republican party into cultural conservatism - against abortion, contraception, immigration, voting rights, gay marriage, LBGTQ+ rights, and, eventually, against transgender rights, teaching America's history of racism and, during the pandemic, even against masks.

At the same time, cultural conservatism was for police cracking down on crime (especially committed by Black people), teaching religion with public money, retailers discriminating against LBGTQ+ people, and immigration authorities hunting down and deporting undocumented residents.