The House Repub­li­can Cau­cus in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., which once enforced behav­ioral stan­dards, is increas­ing­ly a place where shows of vio­lent fan­ta­sy and the foment­ing of real-life vio­lence are con­doned, excused and even endorsed.

The lat­est fan­ta­sy came Mon­day when an altered ani­me video was tweet­ed from the Twit­ter account of U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Gosar, R‑Arizona.

In the video, Gosar kills Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ale­san­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, D‑New York, and swings swords at Pres­i­dent Biden. Asked about the video by The Wash­ing­ton Post, Gosar’s press aide replied: “Every­one needs to relax.”

After arriv­ing at the 2021 Unit­ed Nations Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence in Scot­land, AOC respond­ed: “So while I was en route to Glas­gow, a creepy mem­ber I work with who fundrais­es for neo-Nazi groups shared a fan­ta­sy video of him killing me. And he’ll face no con­se­quences because (House Minor­i­ty Leader Kevin McCarthy) cheers him on with excus­es. Fun Monday.”

As col­league Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ted Lieu of Cal­i­for­nia accu­rate­ly observed: “In any work­place in Amer­i­ca, if a cowork­er makes an ani­me video [depict­ing them­selves] killing anoth­er cowork­er, that per­son would be fired.”

But not from the House Repub­li­can Cau­cus. Kevin McCarthy has become a Trump strum­pet, fight­ing suc­cess­ful­ly to block the for­ma­tion of an inde­pen­dent bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol, and try­ing unsuc­cess­ful­ly to block a House pan­el from cit­ing Trump cronies for con­tempt when they refuse to pony up documents.

It wasn’t always so.

As recent­ly as 2019, McCarthy moved to strip Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve King, R‑Iowa, of com­mit­tee assign­ments after defend­ing the terms “white nation­al­ist” and “white supremacy.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mark Foley, R‑Florida, was forced to resign his seat in 2006 after rev­e­la­tion he had sent sug­ges­tive emails to male House pages.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Randy “Duke” Cun­ning­ham, R‑California, was shown the door that same year after being con­vict­ed of tak­ing bribes.

No more.

McCarthy whipped Repub­li­can “No” votes when House Democ­rats moved to deny QAanon-sup­port­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, R‑Georgia, of her com­mit­tee assign­ments. The motion passed on a par­ty line vote.

Gosar, who has served in Con­gress since 2011, has raised mon­ey for and appeared at white suprema­cist gath­er­ings. He has bought in to ex-Pres­i­dent Trump’s claims of elec­tion fraud. The lawmaker’s sis­ter, respond­ing to the Mon­day tweet, went on CNN and claimed Gosar is engag­ing in “socio­path­ic fantasies.”

In an August 1st op-ed, sib­lings Jen­nifer, Dave and Tim Gosar wrote: “Although his col­leagues in Con­gress and oth­ers in the media seem to only recent­ly be pay­ing atten­tion, we have been aware of his unhinged behav­ior for years.”

Behav­io­r­i­al stan­dards in the par­ty of Lin­coln seem to have utter­ly van­ished, at least in Con­gress’ low­er chamber.

Thir­teen House Repub­li­cans vot­ed last week to pass the bipar­ti­san infra­struc­ture pack­age, which cap­tured nine­teen Repub­li­can votes in the Sen­ate, includ­ing Mitch McConnel­l’s. The House votes, how­ev­er, were greet­ed with threats and howls.

“Vote for this infra­struc­ture bill and I will pri­ma­ry the hell out of you,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Madi­son Cawthorn, R‑North Carolina.

Added scan­dal-plagued Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz, R‑Florida: “I can’t believe Repub­li­cans just gave the Democ­rats their social­ism bill.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Greene described the thir­teen “yea” Repub­li­can vot­ers as “trai­tors” and said they had con­spired to “pass Joe Biden’s Com­mu­nist takeover of Amer­i­ca” — then pro­vid­ed her fol­low­ers with their phone numbers.

The result has been a break­out of obscene, threat­en­ing phonecalls, usu­al­ly received by youth­ful interns in House offices. Long­time Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Fred Upton, R‑Michigan, shared a voice mail he received: “F****** trai­tor, that’s what you are, you’re a f****** piece of s*** trai­tor. I hope you die. I hope every­body in your f****** fam­i­ly dies. You f****** piece of s*** trash. Mother******.”

The pan­der­ing to threats and vio­lence shows no signs of abat­ing and has spilled over to right-wing media. Lau­ra Ingra­ham, the FNC host, last night encour­aged con­tri­bu­tions to the Kyle Rit­ten­house Defense Fund. Tuck­er Carl­son was defam­ing one of the two peo­ple Rit­ten­house shot dead with his AR-15 assault rifle.

The dark­er side of the Amer­i­can dream seeks whomev­er it may devour.

As Paul Gosar’s sib­lings wrote in their op-ed: “This means unless your col­leagues step in, you are like­ly doomed to go down in his­to­ry as a cau­tion­ary tale – a per­son who betrayed his fam­i­ly, his coun­try and even himself.”

In short, he’s a Kevin McCarthy Republican.