“House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced no disciplinary actions against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) [photo, left] in a statement released as he met with his caucus,” The Hill reported on Wednesday, February 3, 2021. “During the meeting, he told members he did not want to remove Greene from her committee assignment, according to a senior GOP source in the room. In the statement, McCarthy condemned her incendiary remarks, but offered no disciplinary actions.” Read story here.
All talk, no action.
But even worse, “Greene was given a standing ovation by dozens of House Republicans Wednesday after refusing to apologize for her conspiracy theories – and escaping any censure from the party’s leadership as she openly mocked them,” according to the U.K-based tabloid Daily Mail (read that story here).
That’s depraved, there’s no other word for it. (The Hill says here that Greene did apologize, but the ovation came later.)
George Conway, a conservative lawyer and husband of Trump sycophant KellyAnne Conway, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “We’re watching the moral collapse of the Republican Party,” in a video here.
We sure are.
But it’s more than that; we’re also watching the collapse of the unity and bipartisanship that Biden offered to Republicans. Think about it: He agreed to negotiate with them about Covid-19 relief, and invited 10 of their senators to the White House to discuss that issue, but they were intransigent as ever. And House Democrats gave their GOP counterparts a chance to deal with their rogue member, but their response is that publicly inciting the kind of people who stormed the Capitol to murder those House Democrats doesn’t require more than a lecture.
That won’t cut it.
It’s time to recognize that Republicans have left the reservation. Democrats have a governing majority, and can govern without them. By all appearances, they’ll have to. The GOP’s voter base has been whipped into a frenzy by a lying demagogue, other GOP leaders allowed it to happen, and have done nothing to defuse that. You can’t cut deals with people like these. You can only outvote them, and push back against the anti-democratic notion of minority rule.
America will not be the first country to descend into political violence, if that’s what it comes to. Many countries are like that. We’ve been the exception, not the rule. Maybe our luck is running out. But no one, Democrat or Republican, should want that. A far better alternative is for Republicans to stop acting like children, grow up, and become a responsible political party led by adults again.
Update (2/3/21): Later Wednesday, AOL News reported McCarthy “would not yield to a bipartisan outcry to punish her [and] suggested he would reach no agreement with Democrats … to remove her from her committees.” (Read story here.) After she wanted Democratic leaders dead? If he won’t give an inch to Democrats on an issue like this, there’s no hope for bipartisanship, and it isn’t Democrats who killed it.
But at least they can argue they didn’t discipline Liz Cheney for voting her conscience, either. Read that story here. Wouldn’t it have been something if they had let Greene walk and punished Cheney? A woman in Republic, Washington, who was molested as a child probably can relate to that (read that story here).
Question: If the GOP suffers moral collapse, when will they finally implode? Will extremists like Greene break off and create their own party?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Right now, it appears the mainstream Republicans in Congress are letting themselves be pulled into the extremists’ orbit.
Tis is the normal response of the minority party in the House. If the majority try to remove the member he will put the Congressperson onto committees the Speaker and majority whip are on.
If the majority party is serious about bipartisanship and unity this is not how you get there, better to have a blind eye and let the sleeping dog lie until she did something as a congress person. Yes the Democrats have the majority, but it is narrow and the Democrats are not as unified as they appear. A new crop of Southern Dixiecrats could emerge, and bills have to get through the Senate.
While Democrats may not like it the Minority leader is correct in his actions. The Democrats are overreaching as the minority party in the House has the right to fill their committee seats as the leader sees fit. He is acting as and adult and political leader of his caucus. In times past Cheney would be gone, and barred from the Republican table, and it does not help that she has not raised money for the party as her position requires. Liz Cheney will be primaried just the minority leader recognizes she has staying power in her district.
The reality is there is a real coup going on in the world in Myanmar perhaps members of congress should familiarize themselves with the real thing,
Americans familiarized themselves with the radicals trying to destroy what our country stands for. Disrespecting police officers, the law and the public buildings that belongs to all of us taxpayers. Call it a failed coup attempt or not, the alt right radicals are being arrested and may be sentence to many years in Federal prisons. Myanmar is an ongoing issue that needs to be addressed, as does the on going threats to Taiwan. Taking care of the coup attempt at home needs to be addressed first (remember America first 🙂 then address the political issues abroad.
Actually, they all have to be addressed at the same time. But who says governing is easy? It’s hard. That’s why voters shouldn’t elect inexperienced amateurs to do it.