THIS WILL KEEP HAPPENING TO FOX

The Republican rank-and-file wants to burn it all down, and Sean Hannity made it clear on Wednesday that he doesn't.

Fox News host Sean Hannity engaged in an unusually heated discussion with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on Wednesday about why she and a handful of her colleagues won’t coalesce around Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as House speaker.

“McCarthy has 202-3 votes. Your side has 20. So if I’m going to use your words, and your methodology, and your math, isn’t it time for you to pack it in and your side to pack it in considering he has over 200 and you have 20?” Hannity asked....

Boebert then claimed, in regards to the voting tally, that “there are more for us than there are against us” because some members who have voted for McCarthy are waiting for him “to cave.”

“I’m frustrated by you not answering a direct question,” Hannity said, adding later: “I feel like I’m getting an answer from a liberal!”

Brian Kilmeade is thinking along the same lines.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday called the Republicans denying Rep. Kevin McCarthy the speakership "insurrectionists" — but then quickly walked the comment back.

"This is how insincere the insurrectionists are," Kilmeade said.

He immediately paused, then said: "Probably shouldn't use that word. The people that don't wanna vote for Kevin McCarthy."

Other right-wing outlets lambasted Hannity's Boebert interview.

Hannity’s shouting match with Boebert ... prompted Fox’s smaller far-right media rivals to pounce and call out the conservative network for casting in with the “uniparty swamp rats.” Newsmax host and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson, for instance, called Hannity “the Praetorian Guard of the establishment” while decrying his “embarrassing” interview with Boebert.

Fox made trouble for itself when it accurately declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. It's repaired the damage to its reputation on the right (and to its ratings), largely by championing new right-wing crusades and celebrating the right's biggest post-Trump hero, Ron DeSantis.

But Rupert Murdoch wants a functional right-wing party that only embraces extremism in order to drive angry whites to vote for corporatist Republicans. It doesn't want insurrection or chaos or a government that literally ceases to function.

But Fox's viewers want all that. They're told every day (on Fox and elsewhere) that the country is run by pedophile communists who want to turn all white people in America in second-class citizens, if not out-and-out slaves. No wonder they think blowing everything up seems like a neat idea.

For years, Rupert Murdoch and other right-wing billionaires have assumed that they can tell rank-and-file right-leaning voters that they're living in one of the most brutally repressive societies in human history, and the voters will just ... vote for people whose main concern is cutting rich people's taxes. I suspect it won't work for much longer. These voters think they're living in hell. They think that because that's what they're told. So of course they want radical change, or pure destruction. The likes of Sean Hannity and Kevin McCarthy aren't going to satisfy them for much longer.