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The politics of retaliation

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy says if Republicans win the House in this year’s elections, he’ll “remove some high-profile Democratic members from their committee roles,” NBC News reported on Monday, January 10, 2022 (read story here). Before I comment, let’s dig a little deeper into this.

“The Democrats have created a new thing where they’re picking and choosing who could be on the committee,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said in an interview with Breitbart, a rightwing propaganda platform.

That’s a lie. Democrats aren’t choosing Republican committee members, McCarthy and his caucus are.

The Democratic majority did strip Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing firebrand from Georgia, of her committee assignments. That was punishment for promoting violence against Democrats. Greene deserved to be expelled for that, but expulsion requires a two-thirds majority, and Republicans don’t see fit to discipline their members for such behavior.

McCarthy also is upset because two of his appointees to the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection were rejected by Speaker Pelosi. That’s because they voted against certifying the 2020 election, despite lack of any reasonable grounds for doing so, and in her judgment they would seek to obstruct the committee’s work instead of participating in it. That was within her authority, and she exercised that authority properly. She gave McCarthy the opportunity to appoint someone else to that committee, but he threw a tantrum and led his party in a boycott of the committee. That was solely his decision.

McCarthy has a right to expect the same behavior standards, and sanctions, will apply equally to both parties. I have absolutely no problem with McCarthy imposing like discipline on Democrats for like behavior. He should. Democrats should do it to their own, when they step out of line, as Greene did.

But the reality is that Democrats don’t behave like Republicans. No House Democrat has encouraged the public to kill Republicans, as Greene did, which is what got her sanctioned. (Greene has also violated other House rules and decorums.) McCarthy isn’t talking about disciplining misbehaving Democrats, he’s talking about retaliating against Democrats for disciplining misbehaving Republicans.

Some Republicans, Greene among them, also are threatening to impeach Biden in retaliation for Trump’s impeachments. Trump deserved to be impeached. It was necessary to impeach him to uphold the standards of behavior that the American people have a right to expect of their presidents. Republicans, by letting Trump get away with unacceptable presidential behavior, refused to uphold those standards.

This is tribal politics, not rules-based politics. Do you want to live in a country where anything goes, if people can get away with it? If we, as voters, allow Republicans to drag our political system into a netherworld of tit-for-tat retaliation, of getting even for appropriate imposition of discipline for bad behavior, our country will be stepping away from civilization into the jungle. This is akin to attacking a judge for imposing sentence on a criminal. Morally, it’s no better than that, and has the same corrosive effect on society.

For now, the only way to avoid this is by refusing to elect Republicans until they clear their heads and straighten out their thinking. Until the GOP decides to rejoin the human race, they’re not electable.

Related: Read CNN op-ed here.

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0 Comments Add Yours ↓

  1. Mark Adams #
    1

    It always sucks to be the minority party in the house. Usually a modicum of caution comes into play when the separation is 5 seats. Speaker Pelosi is acting like the Dems have a 50 seat majority, they do not. The Speaker may learn the hard way what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Also will Speaker Pelosi step down from Democratic leadership when the Republicans claim the majority? Are the Dems really going to try the keep newly elected Republicans from taking their seats and push others out of the House should there be a shellacking? [Edited comment.]

  2. Roger Rabbit #
    2

    Your comment sidesteps the issue, which is whether politics will be conducted within a set of rules or civilized behavior, or the GOP will allow its members to encourage death threats against their Democratic colleagues and then retaliate for sanctioning that behavior. If a Democrat did what Greene did, I would hope and expect the Democrat would get the same sanction. The idea is that you defend your colleagues only so far, and when they cross a line, as Greene did, you don’t defend them anymore and join in sanctioning them, in order to discourage that kind of behavior.