The Politics of Outrage

With their aggrieved spectacles, House Republicans may be whipping up their base. But they offer a clear contrast for most Americans tired of fact-free extremism.

Georgia’s attention-seeking Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupts President Biden at the State of the Union on Tuesday. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

For all the naysayers determined to prove that Joe Biden is too old, too tired, too cognitively impaired to perform his job as president, Tuesday night’s State of the Union was a bust. The reality is that President Biden made it hard to argue that an 80-year-old man—and specifically this energetic 80-year-old man—was not up to the task or must move aside for someone younger. This State of the Union was a master class in how to drive your message and negotiate desired outcomes in real time.

You could see it in the litany of issues that he articulated in plain language: “Americans are tired of being played for suckers” by big business. “The tax system is not fair.” “No billionaire should be paying a lower tax rate than a schoolteacher or a firefighter.” “Democracy must not be a partisan issue.” “We have to see each other, not as enemies, but as fellow Americans.”

And you could see it in his remarkable jujitsu in noting there are Republicans bent on cutting Medicare and Social Security, adding, “Anyone who doubts me, contact my office.” He then responded to the angry pushback in the room by expressing his feisty pleasure: “So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right? We got unanimity!”

Yet while the professor was conducting his class, the House chamber included attendees who only came to heckle and try desperately to attract attention away from the podium. On this night and in the days since, we’ve gotten more evidence that the loudest Republicans are determined to add kindling to the bonfire that is the GOP and its downward spiral into extremism and performative outrage.

While I’m continuously reluctant to amplify or even reference Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene—and that includes detailing her cries of “liar” and other noises during the president’s address—it’s her comments from the day after that I’m compelled to share. They offer a grim illustration of what happens when a House Speaker has convinced one of his members to believe in her unusual value and importance.

Appearing with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Greene refused to apologize for her shouting. “Joe Biden is a liar,” she told Hannity. “I represent the American people and I was honored to call him a liar that he is in the people’s house and not allow him to get away with it.”

Remember that this was the person who stalked high school student David Hogg, who had recently survived the mass shooting at Florida’s Parkland High School, to harrass him and complain that he was trying to “take away my second Amendment rights” by advocating for “red flag” gun control legislation.

Then there was the “rebuttal” from newly elected Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders—she being the gaslighting press secretary serving up the lies of Donald Trump for two years—which was a scripted version of the jeering from Greene and her fellow hecklers.

Her “youthful” worldview (she reminded her audience that, at 40, she’s the nation’s youngest governor) had little to do with the address just delivered in the House chamber; she was all focused on a president who has “surrendered his presidency to a woke mob,” a “radical left America” in which Washington “lights your hard-earned money on fire,” where “children are taught to hate one another,” the Biden Administration is “doubling down on crazy,” and “every day” freedom-loving Americans like Sanders “are told we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags and worship their false idols.”

Never mind how disconnected from reality this was—what, pray tell, are the radical left’s flags to which they must salute?—her piece de resistance was insisting that she was representing “normal” against “crazy.”

Like most of such rebuttals, we can expect it will quickly evaporate into oblivion (except perhaps Marco Rubio’s infamous grab for a water bottle to quench his dry lips). But I thought it worth lingering for a moment to emphasize the sad and dangerous bubble that Fox News and its propagandists have constructed for Sanders and her fellow Republicans who’ve figured out that such culture war nonsense is a fine way to whip up MAGA cultists, separate them from their money—and land a TV appearance.

Not only can we expect two solid years of all this crazy talk about so-called freedom and the woke mob and tired old Joe Biden “hijacked by the radical left,” we can be sure that the quantity and intensity will accelerate as the presidential race heats up and election denialism and other conspiracy theories become the presumed lingua franca. That is, if facts and reason are your mode of communication, you can forget the nomination or a double-digit score in the GOP primaries

There was more to come. On Wednesday the GOP-led House Oversight Committee was busy pushing the fact-free storyline that the federal government conspired with Twitter to censor the “truth” about Hunter Biden’s laptop. And yesterday was the first from the Jim Jordan-led “Weaponization of the Federal Government” subcommittee, a Joe McCarthy-style House un-American operation fueled by conspiracy, including more on Hunter’s laptop, claims of federal informants and other operatives inciting the Jan. 6 mob, and the notion that Anthony Fauci was involved in the nefarious abuse of COVID vaccines.

In other words, more kindling on the GOP bonfire, more empty outrage to gin up grievance, more pork and beans for the deluded believers, more gaslit flatulence.

Honestly, it’s hard to comprehend how President Biden maintains such equanimity. But Tuesday night he showcased the difference between normal and crazy, between calm, even cheerful advocacy and performative outrage. As unpleasant as it all is, the contrast is likely to resonate with most of America that wants nothing to do with election-denying QAnon believers and their outraged leaders.

Steven Beschloss @StevenBeschloss

They don’t cheer for 12 million new jobs. They don’t cheer for quality education, expanded health care or billionaires paying the same tax rate as firefighters. They surely don’t cheer for democracy. Once again, the Republicans told us what kind of America they want.

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