House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is putting his foot down with his caucus and threatening to discipline its members if they step out of line. But his misplaced priorities are an embarrassment for him and the party.
McCarthy has threatened to strip Republicans of their committee assignments if they accept an offer to serve on the Jan. 6 commission that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has set up. The commission is obviously a partisan tool. But with McCarthy taking a hard-line stance here, it calls attention to all of the issues he has let slide so far. And there are a few notable ones.
Radical Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is the most obvious one. Republicans should have removed Greene from her committee assignments for numerous violations of decorum and decency (or, ideally, never given committee assignments in the first place). But McCarthy has never disciplined her. He treats her only mildly tougher than Pelosi treats Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, which is not exactly a high bar to clear.
More egregiously, McCarthy has yet to do or say much of anything about Arizona’s Rep. Paul Gosar palling around with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. After Fuentes used Gosar’s image in a fundraising advertisement, McCarthy reportedly called Gosar into his office, where the Arizona congressman denied the event was happening, though he appeared to defend it on Twitter. That was apparently good enough for McCarthy.
But the image Fuentes used of Gosar was when Gosar met with him in February of this year. Gosar spoke at an event hosted by Fuentes. McCarthy should know this: Washington Examiner reporter Haley Victory Smith reached out to him about it at the time — more than once.
For context, Gosar attended an AFPAC event in February. I emailed McCarthy’s office five times over the course of two weeks asking for comment and never heard back. https://t.co/WK92Tx1XLF
— Haley Victory Smith (@Haley_Victory) June 29, 2021
McCarthy had nothing to say about it then, and threatening Republicans about their committee assignments now is incredibly embarrassing given his inaction with Greene and his inaction with Gosar. It is even more galling when considering that he took the appropriate stand of removing former Iowa Rep. Steve King from his committee assignments in 2019 after he made comments clearly interpreted as racist. If he held to reasonable standards against King then, why not against Gosar and Greene now?
Yes, the Democrats intend to use the Jan. 6 commission as a political tool against Republicans. Yes, Republicans should not humor what will be a highly publicized political attack on them by joining it. But threatening Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney for joining the commission or for her justifiable condemnation of former President Donald Trump’s role in influencing the riot while giving a pass to Gosar and Greene is absurd.
Just because the GOP is in a good position now to retake the House in 2022 doesn’t mean it will still be the case in 2022. Emboldening the behavior of Greene and Gosar while focusing one’s ire on Cheney is a great way to run the GOP into the ground and play into every harmful narrative the Democrats want to push about the party.
