Republican extremists behaving very badly

Echo opinion letter published in The Boston Globe:

Guess what? This is no longer your father’s Republican Party. 

From Ronald Reagan forward, it has moved relentlessly rightward toward an ever more extreme corporate agenda. Its leaders’ cynical incitement of the conservative middle-class voters they needed to win elections eventually spawned Donald Trump and the party’s current MAGA wing.

Kevin McCarthy, like Senator Mitch McConnell and others, fits within that original elite but radicalized corporate GOP wing. MAGA-ism, by contrast, checks all the boxes in any reputable political science checklist for a nativist, American fascism. 

If it quacks like a duck, it usually is one.

Those two wings have their areas of overlap and cooperation, but the ruthless and nasty ouster of McCarthy from the speakership Tuesday reflects their stylistic and substantive divisions, their mutual contempt, and their divergent goals. Among the MAGA grass roots, awareness of what their duplicitous movement is at its core probably varies widely. But that makes no real difference. Along with an endless list of earlier indicators, McCarthy’s ouster portends the fascist savagery MAGA would try to inflict on us all were it ever to realize its clear ambition to overthrow the institutions of so-called liberal democracy from within or without.

From Jim Taff in  Roslindale, Massachusetts 

P.S. A note from Al DiLascia in Chicopee, Mass

"I hope the Republicans will select House majority leader Steve Scalise. He is an excellent leader, respected by both parties."