OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Freshman GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had some frustrating words for House Republican leaders after colleague and fellow firebrand conservative Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona was censured by the Democratic majority this week.
Just the News reported that Greene is upset at Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) because she doesn’t believe he has done enough to protect the most loyal members of the party while also failing to take action against the 13 House GOP members who voted with Democrats to push the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill over the finish line after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) failed to secure enough members of her own party to pass it.
In an interview with the outlet, Greene said she has seen “no willingness to fight for people like me … no fight for Paul Gosar, who’s getting censured here — and to lose his committee assignments.”
The House voted mostly along party lines, 223-207, on Wednesday to censure Gosar, an exceedingly rare action for the chamber, over a 90-odd-second anime-style video posted to his Twitter account featuring a photoshopped image of him attacking an animated figure with the face of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
After the vote, Gosar was also stripped of his committee assignments, “effectively neutralizing his ability to influence legislation or oversight in Congress,” the outlet reported.
Greene was also stripped of her assignments by the Democrat majority in February after the discovery of some controversial posts to her social media accounts. She had only been in office for a few weeks.
Overall, Republicans see their treatment as very different from those of Democrats who commit similar or worse infractions, Just the News notes:
While Gosar’s video has been condemned by fellow Republicans as inappropriate and in poor taste, many suspect he is the victim of a double standard that has let Democrats escape punishment for offenses of equal or greater gravity.
In June, for instance, a group of Republicans moved to censure several members of “The Squad,” to no avail. Reps. Michael Waltz (Florida), Jim Banks (Indiana), and Claudia Tenney (New York) introduced a resolution to censure and condemn Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts), and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan), for “defending terrorist organizations and inciting anti-Semitic attacks across the United States.”
The resolution cited several references by the lawmakers to Israel as an “apartheid state” and one occasion when Tlaib accused the Israeli government of “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians.
The resolution followed a flareup of fighting between Israel and Hamas and a statement by Omar in which she accused the U.S. and Israel of “unthinkable atrocities” that she equated with those perpetrated by Hamas and the Taliban.
The last time a member was censured was in 2010; the then-Democrat-controlled chamber acted against one of their own, then-Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, over multiple ethics violations that included tax evasion.
Republicans have also been targeted by the Biden Justice Department and by House Democrats on the partisan Jan. 6 committee, including former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon. He was “indicted last week by the Department of Justice on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach,” Just the News reported.
“It has been years since the DOJ opted to prosecute any individual held in contempt of Congress. The last successful conviction by the DOJ on contempt of Congress charges was in the Watergate era, when burglary defendant G. Gordon Liddy was convicted for refusing to answer questions before a House subcommittee,” the outlet added.
For his part, McCarthy hinted that there could be some political payback coming for Democrats if the GOP retakes the chamber during next year’s midterms.
In particular, he cited Eric Swalwell of California, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Maxine Waters of California for possible sanctions over past actions to include stripping them of committee assignments.
“This isn’t about threats, but it’s about holding people accountable,” McCarthy told reporters this week. “I think the majority is going to have to approve any of those members on the committees of which they can serve.”
