Yesterday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) executed her latest assault on Congress as an institution and on the Republican minority in particular when she led an effort to censure conservative Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ). Rep. Gosar was censured and stripped of his two committee assignments for the horrific crime of posting a cartoon on Twitter.
“90-second video is an altered version of a Japanese anime series, interspersed with shots of Border Patrol officers and migrants at the southern U.S. border. During one roughly 10-second section of the video, animated characters whose faces have been replaced with Gosar and fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado are seen fighting other animated characters.
In one scene, Gosar’s character is seen striking the one made to look like Ocasio-Cortez in the neck with a sword.”
For daring to post an edgy cartoon on Twitter, Speaker Pelosi called for Gosar to be censured, stripped of his committees and the subject of a criminal investigation.
Only two Republicans joined in Pelosi’s latest abuse of power, unsurprisingly Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) happily joined Pelosi in disenfranchising the almost 300,000 voters in Arizona’s 4th Congressional district who voted for Gosar in his landslide re-elect in 2020.
This isn’t the first time Pelosi has engaged in unprecedented abuses of power aimed at disenfranchising Republican voters and criminalizing dissent – and this isn’t the first time that Cheney and Kinzinger have been willing foot soldiers in her effort.
In February of this year, Pelosi led an effort – supported by Cheney and Kinzinger – to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments for opinions she held prior to her election. Opinions that were well known to her constituents at the time they overwhelmingly elected her to Congress.
Pelosi and the Democratic majority – aided by a handful of Republican enablers – essentially overturned the will of the people of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District (Greene won her election with almost 75% of the vote in 2020), choosing to replace the will of the voters with the will of the Speaker of the House.
Not content to simply disenfranchise Republican voters, Pelosi created a sham January 6th commission, one that only two Republicans voted for – once again Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger – that has sought to criminalize supporters of President Trump and has used the power of the DOJ to jail political opponents.
Cheney and Kinzinger not only voted for the sham January 6th commission, they both gleefully serve on it, and both happily were two of only 10 Republican House members who voted for the insane post-election impeachment of President Trump (an impeachment motivated by Democratic hopes that they would have the votes to bar Trump from ever running for President again).
While Reps. Greene and Gosar, loyal supporters of a conservative America First agenda, are left without committee assignments, both Cheney and Kinzinger, Pelosi’s loyal Lieutenants, retain their Republican committee assignments.
This can not stand.
If Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) wants to continue to lead the Republican caucus in the House then it is time for him to lead and it is time for him to fight.
McCarthy should act immediately to strip both Cheney and Kinzinger of their committee assignments. If Cheney and Kinzinger want to do the bidding of Nancy Pelosi, then they can go to Pelosi to ask for committee assignments.
That, however, is just the start. If, as is expected, Republicans regain the majority in the House in 2022, and if McCarthy wants to serve as Speaker, then he must pledge now to fight fire with fire. If Rep. Greene can be stripped of her committee assignments for espousing “conspiracy theories” than Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) can be stripped of hers for espousing conspiracy theories. If Rep. Gosar can be stripped of his committee assignments for posting a questionable cartoon on social media then Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) can be stripped of his committee assignments for knowingly spreading the now discredited Steele dossier and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) can be stripped of his committee assignments for having an affair with a Chinese communist spy.
It is time to fight fire with fire. It is time to stop bringing a knife to every single gun fight. If Nancy Pelosi has decided that these are the new rules than we need Republican leadership who is willing to use every weapon in his or her arsenal.
If Leader McCarthy does not immediately strip Cheney and Kinzinger of their committee assignments and if he is unwilling to pledge to use the exact same tactics employed by Nancy Pelosi than it is time for the GOP to find a leader who is willing to fight.
