When Democrats removed Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, they created a new partisan battleground in Congress that they will come to regret soon enough. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wants to make sure of that in January 2023.
McCarthy has promised to kick three Democrats off committees they currently serve on. The most obvious one is Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose unrepentant antisemitism belongs nowhere near Congress, let alone the House Foreign Relations Committee. The other two are California Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff, both of whom sit on the House Intelligence Committee.
Swalwell, of course, wouldn’t answer questions about the relationship he had with suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang, who placed at least one intern in his office and helped fundraise for his 2014 reelection campaign. McCarthy also promised that Swalwell would not be permitted to sit on the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Schiff used his role as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee to send the country on a wild goose chase for former President Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia. There was “direct evidence,” according to Schiff, and the evidence was plain to see, even though special counsel Robert Mueller found none in his investigation and partisan Obama administration officials such as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Schiff he “never saw any direct empirical evidence,” either.
None of those three deserve their committee assignments, but until now, that was no reason for the majority party to kick them out. But Democrats, having drawn first blood by sidelining Greene, have handed McCarthy and the GOP a license to return the favor.
Greene obviously should have been stripped of her committee assignments, but it should have been done by Republicans, the way it always has been. McCarthy may have dropped the ball in failing to remove her, but Democrats have done the same by refusing to discipline Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar for obviously unprofessional behavior.
Democrats love power grabs, and they are terrible at looking more than a year into the future when they escalate these partisan battles. They think they will hold the majority forever, but they probably won’t have it next January.
This is the same reason President Joe Biden is demanding that the Senate toss the legislative filibuster while Democrats careen toward election losses in 2022 and 2024. This was another ill-thought-out battle picked by congressional Democrats, and it will come back to bite them, just as every other escalation has.
