(Todd A. Smith)
Thankfully, many Republican leaders criticized politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for speaking at a White nationalist convention led by Nick Fuentes.
But to date, no punishment has been given for that action, unlike the censure that Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) received for simply trying to protect America’s beloved democracy in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.
That reality makes it more difficult for the GOP to attract more Black voters because that shows the political party has more of a problem with democracy than it does with White supremacy.
As the country gets browner by the decade, that cannot be a winning strategy in the grand scheme of things for the Grand Ole Party.
NBC News reported, “GOP leaders in the House and the Senate on Monday denounced a pair of far-right Trump allies—Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.—for speaking at a gathering of white nationalists in Florida over the weekend.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, “There’s no place in our party for any of this…The party should not be associated any time, any place with somebody who is anti-Semitic. This is unacceptable”
When people began comparing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler recently, Fuentes infamously said, “They say that’s not a good thing.”
Despite Fuentes’ hateful rhetoric, politicians like Greene and Gosar still found it beneficial to them to speak at one of his events.
Even House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) whose career almost suffered irreparable harm when he spoke to White supremacists in 2002 rebuked Greene’s appearance at the event, though he acknowledged that she had distanced herself from the remarks of the event’s organizer.
Rep. Scalise said, “There’s no place in America for anti-Semitism, for hate speech and thought that any race is purer than any other.
“It’s my understanding Marjorie had condemned the remarks that the leader of that group made, and obviously he made some statements that were racist and anti-Semitic. We don’t condone those, and we reject it.”
The dilemma that faces the Republican Party going forward, for any true patriotic American, is the fact that many in the party condone a former president trying to overthrow our democracy in favor of a dictatorship.
That is what the former guy tried to do when he lied to his followers about the 2020 presidential election getting stolen away from him by President Joe Biden.
He whipped up a mob of thugs so much that they stormed the United States Capitol seeking to overthrow our government and a legitimate election simply because their guy lost, and he did not like the way most Americans voted.
The crowd of hooligans and criminals said that they wanted to hang former Vice President Mike Pence at the gallows that they had erected, and his former boss did nothing to stop them or quiet their anger.
The former guy sent fake electors to various seats of government to try to steal the election from President Biden.
Many election officials across the country started receiving death threats.
Some even had to exercise their Second Amendment rights in case they had to protect themselves from animalistic hoodlums hellbent on stepping all over the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
Even as people lost their lives trying to storm or protect the U.S. Capitol, many like the Greenes of the world still preached that the election had been stolen by the wannabe Putin puppet.
And many Republicans who knew better backed up that message out of fear of the Trump tribe within the Republican Party.
When politicians like Cheney and Kinzinger had enough onions to speak out against the former guy and hold him accountable for nearly toppling American democracy, many in the Republican Party chose censure and other punitive measures to silence Cheney and Kinzinger’s patriotism and support their own treason.
To the credit of some GOP leaders, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) decision to censure Kinzinger and Cheney was met with backlash.
But the fact that the RNC would even consider censuring two politicians for simply protecting and preserving our Constitution is just indicative of how far the party has fallen from true conservative values.
To make matters worse, the RNC said that the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a violent insurrection at all, despite what the images on television showed the world.
Instead, the RNC said it was “legitimate political discourse.”
That type of stupidity is why many consider the new version of the Republican Party illegitimate, especially in this divisive political climate.
While some Republicans deserve credit for speaking out against Greene and Gosar’s appearance at a White nationalist convention and for rebuking the RNC’s Censure of Kinzinger and Cheney, do not forget that Republicans stripped Cheney of her role as the third ranking Republican in the House for her constant criticism of Trump.
So what will Greene and Gosar’s punishment be for speaking at a White nationalist convention?
Whatever the answer to that question is, it will be telling for the Republican Party.
If they do not punish Greene and Gosar more than just criticizing them in the press it will tell voters what they care about more, ending racism or preserving our beloved democracy.
That conundrum is especially sad considering the Republican Party once was the party of President Abraham Lincoln and the party that championed the Constitution.
