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HOUSE REPUBLICAN HAVE said they will stand by controversial congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and will fight a Democratic push to remove her from a number of committees.
Taylor Greene has expressed support for QAnon conspiracy theories, which focus on the debunked belief that top Democrats are involved in child sex trafficking, Satan worship and cannibalism.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy condemned Marjorie Taylor Greene’s past remarks questioning school shootings, but he criticised a Democratic drive to oust the Georgia Republican from her committee assignments as a “partisan power grab”.
McCarthy’s ridicule of the Democrats signalled he was dismissing bipartisan demands that the hard-right politician be punished for her online embrace of racist and violent views and bizarre conspiracy theories.
McCarthy said Greene’s comments “caused deep wounds” and that she had told him she would hold herself to a higher standard.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell denounced Taylor Greene on Monday, calling her embrace of conspiracy theories and “loony lies” a “cancer for the Republican Party”.
“Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr’s airplane is not living in reality,” McConnell said.
“This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”
Meanwhile, in a 145-61 secret-ballot vote yesterday , House Republicans overwhelmingly rebuffed a rebellion by hard-right conservatives to toss Liz Cheney from the party’s leadership after she voted last month to impeach Donald Trump.
The decisions over Greene and Cheney have subjected Republicans to a politically agonising test of their party’s direction as they move beyond the Trump presidency.
Since Trump grudgingly vacated the White House last month, the party has been ideologically adrift as it has struggled over whether to embrace his norm-busting divisiveness or the party’s more traditional, policy-oriented conservative values.
But as yesterday’s internal showdowns concluded, McCarthy and the House GOP decided against punishing two of their most high-profile women, whose views enrage opposite ends of the party’s spectrum.
The moves were typical of McCarthy’s preference to avoid ruffling feathers as he charts his path to someday becoming House speaker.
“You know what that’s going to mean?” he told reporters after the lengthy evening meeting.
“Two years from now, we’re going to win the majority. That’s because this conference is more united. We’ve got the right leadership team behind it.”
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Her Republican opponent in the Georgia election was a neuro-surgeon: John Cowan. I’m not making that up. He got endorsements from several senior Republican Congress members.
@David A. Murray: Let me guess, he wasn’t enough of a Trumper so he didn’t get the nomination which is exactly what is stopping all the other Republicans speaking out.
@Tricia G: I know the GOP will be doing their own polling and obviously have their ears to the ground in states, but their voter maths looks like loose-loose (besides becoming more entrenched). There are reports of thousands of traditional Republican voters in several states changing to Independent alignment. How the GOP can reach out and expand their voter base is a mystery to me.
@David A. Murray: In some States Independents can vote in primaries but yeah, I can’t see how they can excise the crazies.
@David A. Murray: Ben Carson was also one of the most renowned surgeons ever. He is also a creationist. Expertise in one domain is not universally applicable to other areas.
@David A. Murray: let me guess… he did brain surgery on her and there was a problem . There was nothing there !
@Ned Gerblansky: That’s a very good point.
@David A. Murray: For Congress seats the vast majority for both parties are gerrymandered safe seats. Taylor Greens seat is a safe one. That means the only election that really matters is your primary election and the only people who usually vote in a primary is the most extreme/invested in the parties ideology. Taylor Green and AOC are the endpoints of Gerrymandering. Except one believes in feeding refugee children and the other believes in Jewish space Lasers.
Republican leadership still afraid of losing trump’s followers. They will do anything to appease them.
If greene is let away with this qanon will gain a stranglehold on the party. People need to be held accountable for their actions. What happened in January will happen again the next time they don’t like an election result if something is not done to show they can get away with it.
@Irish Sean: correct even if say 20% of them are hardliners that’s way too much of a base to lose, they would never win again.
@Irish Sean: republicans same all over the world any sign of mary lou
@Tommy the postman: Think you would want to check your history concerning the difference between Republicanism in Ireland and the U.S. Just goes to confirm the political ignorance of some people.
The Republican party is truly lost at this stage. Having socially and economically conservative viewpoints has been replaced with willful ignorance and party wide acceptance of conspiracy theories.
@Mike Ryan: Ousting Trump was a prime opportunity to try salvage the party and pin the terrible party behaviour all on him. Instead they’ve doubled down on their support of delusion and are now actively encouraging delusion, hatred and fear.
It’s a scary time.
@Mike Ryan: It’s their party members that are the ones deciding who gets on the ballot. And most of what’s left believe “the big lie”. Don Jr. was correct. It’s Trump’s party now.
Here’s the thing. This woman was elected democratically. The fact that a denier of reality is now in Congress is a symptom of a wider failure of rational, critical thought in some parts of American society. Removing her is just attacking a symptom while the true issue persists. They need to work on the root causes over there or this isn’t going away.
@Sebastian Boppert: Having her own party expell her is a start to fighting the many issues. Had she been an independent she would never have won.
Trouble is those left in the Republican party (and by that I mean the members) support her.
But Congress is the party. They have their rules and can remove her from Committees with a simple majority. They’ll fail to remove her from Congress clearly.
@Tricia G: I kind of disagree here. All of this was known about her before she was elected. Putting her on committees is wrong but they can’t really turn around now and say her opinions are unacceptable to the party. There’s also the fact that she was democratically elected with those opinions known. Like it or not she does represent her constituency and I think her opinions are vile and dangerous.
@Sebastian Boppert: The root cause is religion, specifically this American conservative version of christianity. It has been proven scientifically that there is a correlation between fundament religiousness and brain damage. These people live in fear of everything, eternal damnation, baby eating, lizard people, space lasers. It’s not their fault that they are susceptible to believe stuff without sufficient evidence, it’s a medical condition.
I find it so bizarre they are backing her? Would it not be more beneficial to the republicans to remove her, call her a nut job and build for the next election. The Republican Party is honestly giving the green light to any of the crazy’s in America to go wild, it’s scary.
@Aaron Tynan: No. They would be risking their own positions and the next election they would be challenged for the nomination. They would be risking even getting on the ballot as a Republican.
@Tricia G: but if the party took a United approach and cleaned out people like this lady, surely in the long run it would do them better no? Maybe I just don’t get the American mentality, but from the outside it looks like a hellhole right now.
@Aaron Tynan: The “Party” are the people that stormed the Capitol. They’re the people that show up to vote in the Primaries. Sadly their “united” approach is to support Trump and his ilk. Its why she got the nomination in the first place.
You can see that the Leadership don’t support her, McConnellade that clear but the ones deciding who gets to run sadly do.
All the sane people already left the party and there was an additional surge of those moving to Independent since the storming of the Capitol.
@Tricia G: By your logic then the dems would have to kick out ilhan omar and thats not going to happen.
This is the woman that believes the California forest fires were started by a secret Jewish space laser.
And we thought some of OUR politicians were nuts!
She’d be right up the front at a Hitler concert.
They’re leaving it to the Democrats to do their dirty work now, she’s Trump’s protege and they’re afraid of him still. Pitiful.
I dont follow/know/care about the Q stuff, but it strikes me as really ‘bizzare’ that news media all over the world are uniformly dismissing all accusations as ‘cooky theories from weird crazy racists’ while tge fallout if tge Jeffery Epstein stuff hasn’t settled in the background and Ghilane Maxwells court date still approaches..
We thought trump was crazy.
It’s much like another diabolical human being once said” If you think we’re bad wait and see what’s coming after us.
@Enuff Said: “What we allow will continue, what continues will escalate”
Who are these people?
Of course they are. Trumpism hasn’t gone away, they know well that she’s nuts but turning on her would be suicide for their careers. There’s no hope for the Republican party.
Power. Over. Principles.
I swear if hitler wore a maga hat and ran for american congress, Republicans would say he’s a fine upstanding man with a right to his opinions and free speech…
If you read between the lines both Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene are trying to split the republican party from within. Trump will setup his own political party which McCarthy and Greene will happily join. Divide and conquer was former president trumps only move. Republican voters will never turn democrat.
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