In 1965, when Lyndon Johnson was grappling with whether to fire J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, he said: “Well, it’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.” In the case of the beleaguered freshman Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republicans are putting the squeeze on him for being inside the tent and still pissing inside it.
On Thursday evening, the Daily Mail distributed screen captures of a video of Representative Madison Cawthorn with his staff member Stephen Smith putting his hand on the senator’s groin. Cawthorn’s interchanges chief at first said he was unable to give any reaction until he saw the video, yet presented a considerably seriously condemning subtlety: Cawthorn and Smith are obviously cousins, which could imply that the representative had disregarded a government resolution that says public authorities can’t utilize their own family members.
As eyewitnesses would recollect, Cawthorn’s most recent inconveniences started decisively last month when he said that certain individuals he had “turned upward to” in Washington DC had welcomed him to a blow out, and that some would even take “a vital knock of cocaine directly before you”. That, obviously, got Kevin McCarthy irate at him — which shows that the House Minority Leader is prepared to do freely counseling an individual from his gathering openly when he needs to, notwithstanding his involving kid gloves for any semblance of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar.
That’s what makes the rate at which dirt about Cawthorn is emerging so shocking. You may remember that last week, a photo showed him partying in lingerie. The opposition research about him now falling off the back of the GOP truck is prodigious. But the real question is why Cawthorn is the target, particularly given there are equally controversial members in the caucus, including some who, like him, helped incite a literal insurrection.
While it may be funny to imagine that the cocaine orgies are real, evoking the image of Steve Scalise doing rails of Colombia’s finest naughty salt with Lauren Boebert (who dodged the Capitol’s metal detectors when your reporter tried to ask her about McCarthy this week), the truth is more complicated.
First, many Republicans never really liked Cawthorn in the first place (as I wrote in a feature earlier this month). He also only won his seat in the first place because, when Mark Meadows resigned to become Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, he got Trump to endorse Lynda Bennett, a friend of his family.
