Republicans Are All “Q” Now

After the Republican Caucus failed to take any action against QAnon Queen Marjorie Taylor Greene – in fact, the GOP Reportedly Gave Marjorie Taylor Greene A Standing Ovation In Closed-Door Meeting – today the House voted 230-199, with only 11 Republicans breaking with lockstep GOP tribalism to vote to remove Greene from her committee assignments.

No surprise: Arizona’s four GOP House members sided with the QAnon Queen.

The 11 Republicans who voted to remove Greene are Reps. Diaz-Balart, Fitzpatrick, Gimenez, Jacobs (NY), Katko, Kim (CA), Kinzinger, Malliotakis, Salazar, Smith (NJ), and Upton.

The Hill reports, House votes to kick Greene off committees over embrace of conspiracy theories:

House Democrats on Thursday took the extraordinary step of voting to strip committee assignments from a member of the opposite party, saying Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) had forfeited her right to those seats by endorsing conspiracy theories, racist dogma and violence against Democratic politicians.

Lawmakers passed the resolution largely along party lines — 230-199, with 11 GOP defections — to remove Greene from the House education and budget committees after Republicans declined to take action against her themselves.

The debate over Greene’s fate has become emblematic of the larger brawl over the direction and future of the Republican Party in post-Trump Washington. The former president has moved to Florida, his Twitter account shut down, but retains enormous influence over GOP base voters drawn to the nationalist, no-apologies persona that defined his time in the White House — a mold Greene has assumed, with Trump’s enthusiastic support.

Democrats implored the GOP to hold members of Congress to what they think should be a minimal standard: that anyone who has endorsed political violence or embraced conspiracy theories like suggesting school shootings were staged or QAnon – whose supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 – has no business serving on committees.

But House Republicans, wary of angering the GOP base that embraces Trump and Greene, have stepped to her defense. While condemning Greene’s incendiary comments, they also maintain that most were made before she became a member of Congress and therefore shouldn’t be disqualifying.

Shades of George W. Bush’s “youthful indiscretions.” But it occurred only since 2017, not distantly removed in her youth.

Republicans further warned that Democrats were setting a dangerous precedent with the majority party taking unilateral action to dictate the minority’s committee roster.

“I think you are, frankly, overlooking the unprecedented nature of the acts that you’ve decided upon, and where that may lead us when the majority changes,” said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), the senior Republican on the Rules Committee.

Is that meant to be a threat, old man?

Given the extraordinary nature of Greene’s past stances, however, Democrats said they had no qualms about setting an institutional precedent on Thursday.

“If any of our members threatened the safety of other members, we’d be the first ones to take them off of a committee,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Republicans are trying to maintain what House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) described as a “very big tent.” Their dilemma is in locating a strategy that attracts the pro-Trump nationalist base, exemplified by Greene, without repelling other groups of voters — women, independents, suburbanites — vital to their party’s national success.

We are a long way removed from when the GOP expelled the extremist John Birch Society from its ranks back in the 1960s (see below). Kevin McCarthy is an amoral, gutless, craven coward.

The delicate effort to thread that needle was on display in the Capitol Wednesday night, where House Republicans voted privately on the fate of another of their members, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who fended off a challenge to her position as the party’s conference chair after voting to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Greene, meanwhile, received a standing ovation during Wednesday night’s closed-door GOP conference meeting after she apologized for embracing QAnon – which baselessly claims that Democrats and other public figures are running a global child sex-trafficking ring – and other conspiracy theories.

Hours before Thursday’s vote, Greene delivered a speech on the House floor where she defended her foray into the world of online conspiracy theories, but insisted she had more recently recognized the falsities — and dangers — of those narratives.

Sure you did, Sweetie.

But as Greene concluded her speech, she adopted a more defiant tone, blasting unnamed Democrats for what she suggested was their encouragement of the violence that, at times, accompanied last year’s national protests against police brutality.

“If this Congress is to tolerate members that condone riots that have hurt American people, attack police officers, occupy federal property, burn businesses and cities, but yet wants to condemn me and crucify me in the public square for words that I said, and I regret, a few years ago, then I think we’re in a real big problem,” she said.

Greene also took a shot at the mainstream media, equating the veracity of its information to that espoused by QAnon.

“Will we allow the media, that is just as guilty as QAnon of presenting truth and lies, to divide us?” Greene said.

That promptly drew a rebuke from House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who called the comparison “beyond the pale.”

Greene’s speech was just as notable for what she didn’t say. Greene did not address a primary driver of Thursday’s vote: her repeated indications of support for violence against Democrats.

Greene previously liked a Facebook comment in January 2019 that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove Pelosi. And when a Facebook commenter asked her in April 2018 “now do we get to hang them,” referring to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Obama, Greene responded: “Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off.” 

And last September, Greene posted a photo of herself holding a gun alongside images of progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) with the caption “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.”

McCarthy pledged during House floor debate that he will “hold [Greene] to her words and her actions moving forward.”

Like hell he will.

While House Republicans rallied behind Greene on Thursday, their Senate counterparts have gone out of their way to distance themselves from her.

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the second-ranking Senate Republican, warned on Thursday that Republicans need to “get away from members dabbling in conspiracy theories.”

“I don’t think that’s a productive course of action or one that’s going to lead to much prosperity politically in the future,” Thune said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) this week condemned Greene’s embrace of “loony lies and conspiracy theories” as a “cancer for the Republican Party.”

Democrats have happily embraced those comments, citing them throughout the debate to pressure McCarthy and House Republicans to take action against Greene themselves.

“Why would Kevin McCarthy continue to associate himself and the Republican Conference with someone who Leader Mitch McConnell has characterized as a cancer?” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus. “The last time I checked, cancers need to be cut out and not allowed to metastasize.”

Republicans have confronted the extremists in their ranks in the past, but entirely failed to do so today. Long before QAnon, Ronald Reagan and the GOP purged John Birch extremists from the party:

In 1962, some of America’s most influential conservatives met to talk about a growing threat: the rise of paranoid conspiracy theories on the right.

Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) was thinking about running for president. A mutual friend set up a meeting for Goldwater with William F. Buckley Jr., editor of the conservative National Review, and Russell Kirk, author of the 1953 book “The Conservative Mind.”

In a hotel suite in Palm Beach, Fla., Buckley and Kirk found themselves giving Goldwater advice about how to respond to the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society’s surge in popularity. The society, founded in 1958, was fiercely anti-communist — and fond of crackpot theories. Its founder, candy manufacturer Robert Welch, had accused most of the U.S. government — including former Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower — of being under secret communist control.

Although Welch had been an early donor to Buckley’s National Review in the 1950s, Buckley had come to believe that Welch’s feverish rants threatened the conservative movement’s credibility and its future.

“Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn,” John B. Judis wrote in his 1988 biography, “William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives.” Buckley told Goldwater, according to Judis, that the John Birch Society was a “menace” to the conservative movement.

“Kirk, unimpeded by his little professorial stutter, greeted the subject with fervor,” Buckley recalled in a 2008 article for Commentary. “The John Birch Society should be renounced by Goldwater and by everyone else — Kirk turned his eyes on me — with any influence on the conservative movement.”

But Goldwater had a problem — much like the one that Republican leaders face today, as many of their voters embrace QAnon conspiracy theories and President Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Goldwater wanted to distance himself from the conspiracy theories, but he feared alienating his base.

“Every other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society,” Goldwater told Buckley and Kirk. “I’m not talking about commie-haunted apple pickers or cactus drunks. I’m talking about the highest cast of men of affairs.”

After considering Goldwater’s concerns, Buckley and Kirk agreed to a compromise. They would challenge Welch without directly criticizing the John Birch Society’s members, creating an opening for Goldwater to do likewise. Gingerly at first, but more forcefully as the 1960s went on, the conservative thought leaders began to distance themselves from the Birchers’ paranoid denunciations of the U.S. government.

Within weeks, Buckley wrote a 5,000-word National Review editorial criticizing Welch. “How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are … so far removed from common sense?” Buckley asked. “The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false.”

Goldwater responded with a letter to the National Review that called on Welch to resign from the society. “Mr. Welch is only one man, and I do not believe his views, far removed from reality and common sense as they are, represent the feelings of most members of the John Birch Society,” Goldwater wrote in the letter, published in the magazine’s next issue. “We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.”

* * *

The John Birch Society claimed 100,000 members at its peak, and its magazine and pamphlets influenced more people than that. Its billboards across the country [especially here in Arizona] called for impeaching Chief Justice Earl Warren over the Supreme Court’s decisions in favor of civil liberties and desegregation.

Congressional offices were deluged with batches of similar letters advocating the society’s causes, such as abolishing the income tax, boycotting goods from communist countries, and preserving the House Un-American Activities Committee. The group even blamed communists for American cities putting fluoride in their water for dental health.

By 1962, the John Birch Society had become a major faction on the American right, especially in California. Richard M. Nixon, running for governor there, denounced the group, called on all Republicans to do the same, and said he wouldn’t endorse any Birchers for political office. Nixon’s reward was an outpouring of right-wing support for his opponent in the Republican primary and anemic support from the right in the general election, which Nixon lost.

Barry Goldwater was reluctant, just like Kevin McCarthy:

When Goldwater ran for president in 1964, he didn’t want to lose support from Birchers, his fellow anti-communists. So he stuck to the distinction he’d insisted on to Buckley and Kirk: Welch was unhinged from reality, but average Birch Society members were okay.

“They believe in the Constitution, they believe in God, they believe in freedom,” Goldwater said that March. “I don’t consider the John Birch Society as a group to be extremist,” he added that April.

At the 1964 Republican convention, which nominated Goldwater for president, his supporters voted down a proposed platform plank that would have denounced the John Birch Society and other extremist groups. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” Goldwater declared in his acceptance speech — thrilling archconservatives and helping to doom him to a landslide defeat by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

By 1965, disdain for the John Birch Society was common outside conservative circles. Historian Richard Hofstadter had named Welch and his group as prime examples in his seminal article, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” But hardline conservatives who feared Johnson’s liberal Great Society programs continued to flock to Welch’s organization. California alone was home to an estimated 10,000 members and 1,000 chapters.

Ronald Reagan was also reluctant, just like Kevin McCarthy:

Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan, the actor turned Goldwater supporter, was considering a run for governor of California in 1966. Although he didn’t like Welch’s smear of Eisenhower, “Reagan seemed reluctant to distance himself from the Birch Society,” Matthew Dallek wrote in “The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics.” Reagan’s complaints about a “Communist plot” in the film industry “dovetailed nicely with the society’s [beliefs],” Dallek wrote, “and for the most part Reagan applauded the men and women who peopled its ranks. They were, he implied on more than one occasion, patriotic Americans who deserved recognition for their steadfast devotion to the Republic.”

But in September 1965, as buzz about him and the John Birch Society grew, Reagan realized that he’d have to distance himself from the group. “I am not a member,” Reagan declared at a Republican fundraiser. “I have no intention of becoming a member. I am not going to solicit their support.” Reagan added that a “lunatic fringe” had infiltrated the society and that he was in “great disagreement” with Welch. (Reagan went on to win the California governorship, despite Democratic incumbent Pat Brown’s attempts to tie him to the Birchers.)

A week after Reagan’s statement, Republican congressional leaders Everett Dirksen and Gerald Ford, the future president, jointly denounced the John Birch Society. Buckley kept up his attack, publishing a 14-page special section critical of the Birchers in the National Review in October 1965. Buckley’s editorial declared that the Birch Society had reached “a new level of virulence, a new level of panic.” He warned that the taint of Bircherism could sink Reagan and other conservative candidates in 1966. Goldwater joined in, going farther than he’d had before. In a new letter to the magazine, the former presidential candidate declared that if Welch didn’t resign from the Birch Society, conservatives should resign from it and work instead to support the GOP.

Although the Birch Society still exists today, the renunciations that Buckley led in fall 1965 marked the beginning of the end of its influence over conservative politics. “No fig leaf of respectability remained,” wrote Carl T. Bogus in his 2013 biography, “Buckley: William F. Buckley and the Rise of American Conservatism.” “The society went into steep decline. Recruiting new members was exceedingly difficult. … Even highly visible members quit.” The conservative movement had excommunicated the Birchers’ conspiratorial, unpatriotic hostility — for the next few decades, at least.

POLITICO reported in 2017, The John Birch Society Is Back: “Bircher ideas, once on the fringe, are increasingly commonplace in today’s GOP and espoused by friends in high places.” 2017 is when the QAnon conspiracy cult began. Coincidence?

Ronald Brownstein writes at The Atlantic, How the GOP Surrendered to Extremism. “Sixty years ago, many GOP leaders resisted radicals in their ranks. Now they’re not even trying.” (excerpt):

Of course, the biggest difference between now and the Birch era is that today’s far-right extremists are operating under an umbrella of protection from a former president who remains the most popular figure to the GOP’s base. “I love Buckley dealing with the Birch Society, but he was able to repudiate a group that never had the support of any president and was sort of repudiated by Goldwater,” Kristol told me. Now most GOP elected officials have concluded that the risk of pushback from Trump is too high to speak out. “They think that the danger of getting in a fight with Trump and splitting the party is so much greater than a little bit of accommodation with some wackos and a little bit of groveling to the Trump base,” said Kristol, one of the leading voices in the conservative Never Trump movement.

Kevin McCarthy’s half-hearted slap on the wrist for Greene this week was a measure of the GOP’s limited appetite for constructing a clear boundary against extremism. The likelihood that the majority of Senate Republicans will soon vote to exempt Trump from any punishment for the Capitol riot underscores that message. As does the likelihood that the large majority of House Republicans will vote to defend Greene when Democrats try to remove her from her committee assignments.

* * *

Yet most Republicans appear more comfortable weathering those attacks than confronting what McConnell has called the “cancer” of growing extremist influence in the party. Opening the door to radicals like Greene is part of a much larger shift: As I’ve written before, the GOP is morphing into a quasi-authoritarian party—one that’s becoming more willing to undermine democratic norms to maintain power. Its long-term evolution toward any-means-necessary militance is likely to only intensify as the nation’s growing racial and religious diversity, which triggers so many in the party’s base, unspools through the 2020s. This tug toward conspiracy-theory-laden, often-racist extremism “is in the Republican Party DNA,” Kabaservice told me. “If the party isn’t going to forcefully turn against QAnon and the Proud Boys and the neo-Nazis who invaded the Capitol … then that DNA is going to be passed along in an even more virulent form to the next generation of Republicans.”

This is a prescient warning of the GOP’s drift into fascism. It is a cancer that has been metastasizing in the GOP since the 1950s. As Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus said, “The last time I checked, cancers need to be cut out and not allowed to metastasize.”