The Washington Post’s Amy Wang updates on the continuing fallout from freshman GOP rhetorical arsonist Rep. Lauren Boebert’s implication that fellow Rep. Ilhan Omar could be a suicide bomber, which included an apparently fictional story suggesting that U.S. Capitol Police themselves view Rep. Omar as a security risk–outrageous enough to force an almost unheard-of apology from Boebert, subsequently retracted as Boebert reverted to vituperative form a few days later:
“I’ve had a conversation with the speaker, and I’m very confident that she will take decisive action next week,” Omar said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” It is unclear what Pelosi’s “decisive action” would include. Omar said that Boebert should be stripped of her committee assignments and that House leaders should rebuke her to send a “clear and decisive” message.
“I think it’s important for us to say this kind of language, this kind of hate cannot be condoned by the House of Representatives,” Omar said. “If the Republicans are not going to be adults and condemn this … we are going to do that.”
…Omar also called House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “a liar and a coward” for not condemning Boebert’s language or punishing her. On Friday, McCarthy said Boebert had already apologized publicly and personally, not mentioning her subsequent public statements renewing her attacks on Omar.
On Friday, as Fox News reports, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced that Boebert’s apology was completely satisfactory even after being rescinded:
“Lauren Boebert, as I called her when it came forward, we talked. She apologized publicly. She apologized personally,” McCarthy also said, regarding Boebert’s comments about Omar. “In disagreements and something goes astray, you apologize for it – exactly what Lauren Boebert did.”
Besides,
“Did anyone on [Democrats’] side of the aisle talk about when Omar said the only reason I support Israel is about the Benjamins?” McCarthy said Friday. “I never got an apology or a phone call.”
In case no one remembers what politics were like just a few years ago, let’s be clear that there is a massive difference between suggesting a politician takes a position out of financial interests and suggesting a politician wants to kill you. It’s not the first time we’ve been gobsmacked simply by the need to point out something so patently obvious as this, but here we are again. McCarthy’s denial and absurd whataboutism broadcast clearly his total abandonment of leadership responsibility. None of this should come as a surprise after ex-President Donald Trump himself waded into the spat to gratuitously insult Rep. Omar in an obvious ploy to draw fire away from Boebert. For McCarthy, it looks to have been enough.
McCarthy’s refusal to take responsibility for his caucus obliges Democrats to take action against Boebert, up to possible censure and/or loss of committee seats. Removing Rep. Boebert from her seat on the House Natural Resources Committee would be a major blow to her standing with constituents in CD-3, providing an opening for Democrats and potentially a Republican primary challenger to argue she is no longer worth the trouble. The standard for punishing Boebert compared to the similar recent examples of Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene is consistent in that they have all in their way brought the specter of violence to the U.S. House. It’s a dishonor to their colleagues, their party, and the institution of Congress.
If the roles were reversed, and we mean legitimately reversed not McCarthy’s false equivalence, Republicans would demand nothing less.
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If Q-bert loses her seat on Natural Resources Committee, does Jayson lose his $400,000+ per year O&G job?
They'll drop his ass faster than Jayson dropped his cock when the cops showed up at the bowling alley.
I hope there are finally some consequences for Pew Pew. Sometimes people that dense need a swift kick in the ass to understand.
Begs a question….does the average voter in CD-3 even know what the House Natural Resources Committee is all about?
Nah, they know she'll get it back in 2023, they'll keep paying him to stay in her good graces and wait it out (they know she's vindictive and greedy).
I see a sternly worded letter in her future.
Yeah, about all we can reasonably expect is some kind of public reprimand that her pant-hooting trumpanzee acolytes will see as a badge of honor.
Yup. Stripping Boebert of committee assignments is bad precedent a year before a potential wave election.
Oh, that ship has already sailed, struck an iceberg, went to the bottom, and took many lives with it.
Once MTG was kicked off her committees, the dye was cast. At this point, it's a question of how much we can do to them before they get the chance to do it to us.
While I agree that Pew-pew’s comments deserve reprimand (at a minimum), Rep. Omar’s rhetoric has in the past also pushed the boundaries of propriety. Qbie has crossed the line, obviously, but where is that line? Does anyone really want our congresscritters wasting time debating the drawing of lines and speech policing, when other real important issues actually do exist? . . .
To Rep. Omar my advice would be: Live by the penknife, don’t be surprised when miserably GED-equipped others draw their only, badly rusted sword. . . .
Despite where the former guy has taken the country, we should all now return to expecting, and even insisting upon, a higher level of decorum from all our legislators.
Get to work, all y’all!
They may not believe in evolution, climate change, or even the spherical shape of the earth but the Trump Republicans in the House do subscribe to one scientific principle: Newton's Third Law of Motion. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In this case, the reaction will probably be magnified by a factor of at least two. The Dems removed three Repubs from committees so Kevin McCarthy's House will remove six Dems in January 2023.
My guess is that they will pick the low hanging fruit and Omar will be the first to go. And the Repubs will attribute it to her anti-Semitic comments in the past and loudly deny that it is their own Islamophobia. (Spoiler alert: the two are not mutually exclusive.)
After Omar, they will target the other four members of the Squad plus Adam Schiff.
That's if they stop at six. Who knows, with Gym Jordan as speaker and Paul Gosar as majority leader, they may decree that henceforth all committee shall be comprised of Republicans only and kick all of the House Democrats off committees.
They will go after Maxine Waters also.
Definitely, especially since Trump has a particularly large bug up his ass when it comes to Maxine Waters.
So, R&R, I have a question for you. You clearly enjoy the “gloom and doom, inevitable GOP victory” scenario you predict for 2022. To be fair, others also predict that victory. Your intent may be to be the smug prophet proven correct, or to “warn against complacency”, or to simply enjoy the Schadenfreude of the liberals and progressives you hold in such contempt.
But what are you doing, here and now, to limit or prevent that Republican triumph? As a moderate former Republican, now centrist Democrat, what are you doing to hold the center and moderate the extremes? To preserve Democratic institutions and norms? Do you think your predictions of certain doom do anything but depress and dishearten Democrats? Or is that your intent?
But what are you doing, here and now, to limit or prevent that Republican triumph?
Donating money to viable candidates in competitive races.
Yo tambien. The latest is an Act Blue nod to Stacey Abrams. You go girl!
Plus, I’m not so sure the Hitlerites will win in 2022.
The massive effort to disenfranchise blacks could backfire — There are more Stacey Abrams than the QOP knows.
Also: Abortion. The Supreme Court will rule 5-4 next summer that women are incubators with no rights. I know a lot of GOP women who will be mightily pissed off when that happens. White women without college degrees are key to Republican victories. The backlash could be terrific.
Finally, COVID is now killing far more right wingers than center right.
Sneeze away, anti-vaxxers. Your funeral it is.
I am beginning to think that it is possible – not probable, but possible – that next year could turn into one of those weird elections like '98 or '02 – where something comes up (i.e., an impeachment over a third-rate blow job or fear of another al Qaeda attack) and flips the normal laws of political gravity on their head.
If the Supreme Court issues a clear decision overruling Roe, it just might motivate those suburban women when sent Trump into exile last year into turning out again. But it's still a long shot.
The voter disenfranchise crap may also motivate people. Maybe…
Are the voters of CD-3 unable to choose for themselves?
Just a bunch of hayseeds, right Colorado Pols? Nancy Pelosi no doubt finds them deplorable.
They are able to choose for themselves. And we can say they chose poorly.
If they choose someone who is deplorable, such as your favorite Colorado fascist and one of your sources of income, Lauren Boebert, then I question whether they are not themselves deplorable, especially if they like a bomb thrower who does NOTHING.
Stay the course, Representative Q-bert. Some day they will thank you.
"Unable"? Of course not, cupcake. Those stump-jumping troglodytes are perfectly capable of making choices. Trouble is, a hefty majority opted for a blustering idiot who provides them zero actual representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and regularly brings shame on the entire state.
But hey, anyone who can "own the libs" like Sloebert and happens to have a face that pudgy, mediocre wingnut boys want to push into an American flag MyPillow is A-OK with taxpayer dependent wingnuts like yourself, eh cupcake?
That’s pretty lame, Fuffy, even by those incredibly low standards of expectation we all have for you . . .
Oh hell yes, CD-3 voters are able to choose . . .
. . . and if they choose (again) to be unrepresented by this unmannered, uneducated, mental midget who produces nothing but condemnations and bad sliders, and who can not represent their interests on congressional committees, then they get all the underrepresentation they’ve chosen and deserve.
(Don’t know about every one of them, but you’re certainly deplorable . . .
. . . A hayseed might produce some little bit of useful hay crop, like your Princess Bobie you skip over that entire growing-harvesting-eating-digesting productive cycle and go straight to nothing but the sputtering BS . . .)
These are U.S. representatives who owe duties to all the U.S., not just their congressional districts, asshat
Voting for Boebert doesn't exactly speak to their intelligence, no.
Both Omar and Boebert played to tropes to foster hatred against specific minorities. You don’t need to try to minimize what Omar did to criticize what Boebert did.
If McCarthy did what Pelosi & her leadership did, he wouldn't be getting lambasted.
The statement was issued jointly with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn, Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján, Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries and Caucus Vice Chairwoman Katherine Clark. McCarthy piled on, saying the Republicans stood with Israel as a partner for the Middle East.
And if Boebert did what Omar did, the matter would be dropped. After BOTH sides of the aisle criticized the young legislator, she tweeted
Except Boebert's story about Omar wanting to rid her office of Jew juices is also totally made up. Boebert pulls these lies out of her butt and then repeats them so that fools like you can pretend outrage because wink wink it's all WWE drama. What a dupe.
Well, Omar at least didn’t make shit up. Israel, the United States, and Hamas have in fact a history of human rights abuses…as Omar said.
Omar just said the quiet part out loud. And, she didn’t try to involve Boebert personally in the human rights abuses, or imply criminal conduct.
And she did apologize for using a broad brush rather than focusing on specific abuses, as J i D notes above.
Boebert, on the other hand, fabricated the entire story.
Pointing out facts about Israel's policies is quite different from making Islamophobic "jokes" accusing an individual of being a terrorist.
Are you gunnin' for some free Shooter's grub?
Comes with a free side of violent diarrhea!
Colorado CD-3 deserves better than a high school dropout with a GED. Legislative issues are complex. It's not comedy hour at the right wing bar.
Boebert is going to go absolutely ballistic: It's a good thing those metal detectors on the House floor are still there (for now) since it's not that hard to envision her personally carrying out a mass shooting in Congress.