The National Defense Authorization Act was poised to be a bipartisan success story. The House Armed Services Committee advanced its version of the NDAA on a bipartisan, 58-1 vote, and the legislation appeared on track to avoid the kind of political food fights that too often tarnish congressional policymaking.
Then Republican culture warriors in the House got to work, demanding a series of far-right changes to the package dealing with military spending and defense policy. This wasn’t part of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s original plan — The New York Times’ Michelle Cottle said the GOP leader engaged in “futile pleading“ with his own members — but the Californian, left with limited options, allowed his members to dramatically alter the NDAA.
The result, as we discussed last week, is an NDAA that would, among other things, limit abortion access for servicemembers, end diversity training in the military, curtail transgender care, prohibit work on combatting climate change, and even restrict what Defense Department schools can teach.
Asked on Friday why in the world Republicans took a bipartisan military bill and turned into a vehicle for far-right culture war priorities, McCarthy seemed quite enthusiastic about his party’s handiwork. The House speaker told reporters:
“Stop using taxpayer money to do their own wokeism. A military cannot defend themselves if you train them in woke. We don’t want Disneyland to train our military.”
As the video from the press conference made clear, McCarthy did not appear to be kidding.
Kevin McCarthy: "Stop using taxpayer money to do their own wokeism. A military cannot defend themselves if you train them in woke. We don't want Disneyland to train our military." pic.twitter.com/czkyARfmvu
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 14, 2023
It’s worth noting for context that the House speaker has long struggled with off-the-cuff rhetoric, and it’s easy to imagine McCarthy wishing he could’ve reworded the comments he made on Friday. Except, that’s not the case at all: McCarthy was apparently so proud of his quote about not wanting Disneyland to train our military that he promoted the line via social media.
In terms of a critique of the House speaker’s position, it’s hard to even know where to start. In fact, I’m hard pressed to explain what McCarthy even meant. Evidently, he’s under the impression that the bipartisan bill approved by the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee would have trained U.S. troops “in woke” — phrasing that probably should’ve come with some kind of MAGA-to-English translation guide.
What’s more, I’m baffled by the idea that without these far-right changes to the NDAA, it would be Disneyland that would be training the troops. But arguably the most important takeaway from McCarthy’s weird rhetoric is how familiar it was — because we’d heard similar comments during the NDAA floor debate from his members. Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, for example, insisted last week that the military is suffering a “loss of focus” because of “woke ideology.” That’s absurd, of course, but it’s the sort of line one might expect from a House Freedom Caucus members. And therein lies the point: Much of the political world is accustomed to thinking about the gap between fringe congressional Republicans and members of GOP leadership, but too often, these dividing lines have been blurred to the point that they hardly exist. When mindless jabbering about “wokeism” is as common in the speaker’s office as it is from his far-right flank, there’s a problem.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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