Paul Gosar – Democracy Watch

In a sick and twisted sense, it’s fitting that white supremacists celebrate the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict the same week that House Republicans stood with Representative Paul Gosar for fantasizing about murdering AOC.

If you haven’t been following the news recently, you may not have heard that far-right Congressman Paul Gosar tweeted a doctored video of him murdering Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and striking President Joe Biden. While both of those points have rightly gotten considerable media attention, the video also featured undocumented immigrants crossing the border. The not-too-subtle suggestion from the video is that immigrants crossing the border should be treated with violence.

Apparently, those messages are A-OK with Gosar’s Republican colleagues in the House. After all, only two Republicans voted to censure him: Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). Cheney and Kinzinger are the same Republican representatives who voted to impeach Donald Trump for his coup attempt and currently sit on the 1/6 Committee investigating the insurrection.

The kid-glove approach to Gosar contrasts sharply with how House Republicans are treating other members of their conference. They have already punished Liz Cheney (formerly the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives) for daring to tell the truth about 1/6. They are threatening to punish the 13 moderate Republicans who voted for Biden’s infrastructure bill. (Those same members are also receiving death threats.) Yet all but two House Republicans stood with Representative Gosar when he all-but-encouraged violence against a colleague.

Gosar – who has already been implicated in the insurrection and whose six siblings were featured in an extraordinary ad opposing his re-election – took note of that support. After initially deleting the tweet, he retweeted the video after the censure vote in an act of defiance. The lesson that he apparently learned was that his Republican colleagues had his back and that he should double down.

To be sure, not all of his Republican colleagues agree with Gosar’s extremism; some have mildly condemned it while opposing the censure on weak procedural grounds, arguing that it went too far in stripping him of committee assignments. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) expressed concern with the precedent that the censure would set. Oddly, he had less concern about the precedent set from doing little to nothing when a member of Congress threatens another member.

Aside from Cheney and Kinzinger, everyone else in the House Republican conference is either sympathetic to Gosar or too cowardly to stand up to him. They either outwardly support violence or refuse to condemn it in a meaningful way.

What does that tell us? The fascist takeover of the House Republican conference is all but complete.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr

Republican members of Congress who helped pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill are receiving death threats from far-right extremists.

The Washington Post reports:

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) has received multiple death threats in the days since he voted for President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal, with the overwhelming majority of the calls coming from outside the congressman’s district.
In a CNN interview Monday night, Upton played the audio of one of the calls, which he said came from a man in South Carolina.
“You’re a f—ing piece of s— traitor. I hope you die,” the man can be heard saying. In the expletive-filled call, he goes on to say he hopes Upton’s family and his entire staff die.
An Upton spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Upton told CNN his office has received several such calls after a House colleague tweeted the names and office phone numbers of the Republicans who voted in favor of the bill. The measure passed the House on Friday with a 228-to-206 vote, two months after it was approved by the Senate on an overwhelming 69-to-30 vote.

It’s worth noting that Upton was among those who voted to impeach Donald Trump for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Trump leads the far-right attack

Donald Trump took direct aim at the thirteen House Republicans who voted with Democrats to pass the bipartisan bill, calling them “RINOs” for supporting the measure. The bill passed 69-30 in the Senate back in June.

Meanwhile, some of the most conservative Republican members of the House lambasted their colleagues, promising recriminations in the form of primary challenges.

“I can’t believe Republicans just gave the Democrats their socialism bill,” Representative Matt Gaetz tweeted.

“Insanity”

Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger, a member of the 1/6 Committee, says that “a party with leaders like Kevin McCarthy, that cannot stand up to the insanity from people like Greene, Gaetz, Gosar, etc, is going to have a hard time standing up to countries like China.”

Needless to say, death threats over a bill that funds roads, bridges, and public transit is not normal. It’s yet another sign of the ugliness in our politics and the fascist impulses of a growing number of Republicans.

The unhinged comments from Gaetz et al and the death threats from their supporters come within days of Representative Paul Gosar tweeting a threatening video at Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

As the AP puts it:

In the past week, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar tweeted a video showing a character with his face killing a figure with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face. Several of the 13 House Republicans who backed a bipartisan infrastructure bill said they faced threats after their vote. In one profanity-laced voicemail, a caller labeled Rep. Fred Upton a “traitor” and wished death for the Michigan Republican, his family and staff.
The response from Republican leaders? Silence.

Extremist members of Congress like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar are no longer outliers in a radicalized Republican Party. Worse yet, they’re giving cover to the most violent elements in the party’s base, which already staged an insurrection as part of an attempted coup.