Kevin McCarthy

My colleague Kate Riga and I have been tracking the various ways in which Republicans are freaking out about how their party’s longstanding and extreme positioning on abortion will impact them in coming elections. Kate wrote an excellent piece earlier this week on Republican 2024 candidates’ flailing as they repeatedly and publicly struggle to pick any specific footing on the issue, aware that restrictive policy platforms and abortion bans in general have proven themselves to be wildly unpopular among voters and will likely hurt them in the upcoming presidential general election.

I won’t unpack all the evidence that supports the notion that Republicans are losing the battle of public opinion on abortion here, but to catch up, I’d recommend reading this, this and this.

But, this week, the omnipresent dilemma and intra-party rift appeared in a new venue.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the debt ceiling deal, new entrants to the GOP 2024 presidential race and mutterings about a potential coming indictment.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Back in another lifetime, now-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy upset a bunch of his Republican colleagues when he just straight-up announced on Fox News that the Select Committee on Benghazi was making then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton look bad, and suggested that, hey, that was probably just the goal all along??? 🙃🙃