By Nate
Hochman
Sunday,
January 08, 2023
Congressman
Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas), one of the most outspoken and vociferous critics of
the anti-Kevin McCarthy holdouts in the House Republican caucus, apologized for
describing his colleagues as “terrorists” on CNN’s State of the Union today. The
Hill reports:
“To the extent that I have colleagues that were offended by it, I
sincerely apologize to them. I don’t want them to think I actually believe
they’re terrorists. It’s clearly a turn of phrase that you use in what is an
intransigent negotiation,” Crenshaw said.
Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) ultimately secured the
Speakership after 15 rounds of voting, during which around 20 Republican
holdouts forced the race into a stalemate, preventing McCarthy from hitting the
majority threshold he needed.
Crenshaw last week said the hard-liners “are enemies now” and argued
that “we cannot let the terrorists win.”
The
apology was the right move, and Crenshaw should be credited for it. Describing
members of one’s own caucus as “enemies,” let alone “terrorists,” is hardly
helpful in the opening days of a new Republican majority. Crenshaw did nestle
another snide barb into his apology — saying that he was “a little taken aback”
by the “sensitivity” of his colleagues, given that he’s been “called awful,
vile things by the very same wing of the party.”
That’s
silly: Insofar as Crenshaw has been the subject of similar rhetorical excess,
he presumably thinks it’s a bad thing, and bad things do not, as a general
rule, justify more bad things.
Whatever
one thinks of the anti-McCarthy campaign, it wasn’t “pointless,” as
Crenshaw argued at another juncture during the show — the
holdouts extracted
major concessions from
their new House speaker. Criticisms can be made along the lines that those
concessions were either bad on the merits or not worth the spectacle, but not
that the spectacle had no end unto itself.
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