Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once wrote that he could not define hardcore pornography, “but I know it when I see it.”
The White House is having a similar problem with “ultra-MAGA Republicans.”
President Joe Biden’s rhetorical barrages against Republicans aligned with former President Donald Trump have become a central part of his midterm election messaging. But when asked who qualifies as MAGA besides Trump, that messaging has been mixed.
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Biden has at times presented MAGA as a small but dangerous clique of Republicans threatening democracy, animated by a “semifascist” political philosophy.
“MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution,” he said in Philadelphia. “They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election.”
The implication is that the term applies to Republicans who rejected the 2020 presidential election results or who engaged in and otherwise supported the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to disrupt the electoral vote certification.
“I will not stand by and watch elections in this country be stolen by people who simply refuse to accept that they lost,” he said. “As your president, I will defend your democracy with every fiber of my being, and I’m asking every American to join me.”
But Biden and company have also implied that MAGA is a form of archconservatism, applicable to policy positions on issues ranging from abortion to Social Security that have been litigated long before Trump entered national politics.
“When you are not with where a majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a recent briefing. “That is an extreme way of thinking.”
A majority of just under 55% of the public disapprove of Biden’s performance in office, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion has repeatedly been called out as MAGA by the White House and the president himself.
“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards,” Biden said, “backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”
Biden and the White House frequently reference Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence in Dobbs in which he argued for revisiting all enumerated rights based on substantive due process, rather than the majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, which takes pains to differentiate the abortion decision from marriage and contraception.
A reporter at Wednesday’s briefing pointed out that if opposition to abortion earned the MAGA label, then Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) qualified. Cheney just lost a Republican primary after voting to impeach Trump for his conduct on Jan. 6 and serving as vice chairwoman of a predominantly Democratic committee investigating as much.
At the same briefing, the White House declined to comment on whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is a MAGA Republican. Jean-Pierre had previously identified Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) as such from the podium. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is usually specifically exempted.
The “ultra-MAGA” designation was the product of a six-month study conducted with the White House as part of a strategy to put Trump on the November midterm ballot by branding Republicans with him.
Upon facing criticism, however, the president has tried to narrow the scope of Republicans in this category.
“Not every Republican embraces extreme ideology,” Biden said. “But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.”
The White House has said the adjective applies only to elected officials, not the nearly 75 million people who voted for Trump in 2020.
“I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat. I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence and fails to condemn violence when it’s used, refuse to acknowledge an election has been won … that is a threat to democracy,” Biden told reporters Friday.
Biden again pivoted to a narrower definition of MAGA than was in his Philadelphia speech the previous day. “I am not talking about anything other than … a failure to recognize or condemn violence whenever it’s used for political purposes, failure to condemn the attempt to manipulate electoral outcome, failure to acknowledge when elections are won or lost,” he said.
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Biden then, over Labor Day weekend, denounced “Trumpies” and campaigned for Democrats in the midterm elections.
The White House has been silent about the $44 million Democrats have spent promoting Republican candidates who doubted the 2020 elections on the grounds that they would be easier to beat in a general election.
