117th Congress

[striker42]

I would equate AOC's PR as a Fr Congressperson to Paul Ryan
MTG as Sarah Palin -- who if memory serves advised a crowd in Florida in fall 2008 to use the 2nd Amendment to correct politics
.....

Certain you agree that rhetoric has no place in our politics

I agree there's no place for violent rhetoric like that in politics or society as a whole. I've long been an advocate of deradicalizing American politics.

But again, the last thing you want to do if you want to shut someone up is take highly visible action against them. I equate it to a toddler wanting attention and throwing a tantrum. The worst thing you can do is give them attention. It just gives them what they want. When you have politicians out there saying outlandish or inflammatory things, the worst thing you can do is hand them the spotlight.

What needs to happen with MTG is she needs to be put quietly in a corner, given no attention, and given no chances to grab headlines. Then recruit a well funded and well qualified primary challenger.

[sturg33]

you also read that she lied about her experience Jan 6
masks are useless


you do better chasing The Faux Outrage of the Day or better known from here on FOD

Well

She did

And

They are

[57Brave]

I agree there's no place for violent rhetoric like that in politics or society as a whole. I've long been an advocate of deradicalizing American politics.

But again, the last thing you want to do if you want to shut someone up is take highly visible action against them. I equate it to a toddler wanting attention and throwing a tantrum. The worst thing you can do is give them attention. It just gives them what they want. When you have politicians out there saying outlandish or inflammatory things, the worst thing you can do is hand them the spotlight.

What needs to happen with MTG is she needs to be put quietly in a corner, given no attention, and given no chances to grab headlines. Then recruit a well funded and well qualified primary challenger.

you living in the area, who is viable ---
who has bought real-estate in the past week?

let me rephrase that, is anyone of consequence in the district speaking out against her ?
even before Jan 6

[50PoundHead]

I agree there's no place for violent rhetoric like that in politics or society as a whole. I've long been an advocate of deradicalizing American politics.

But again, the last thing you want to do if you want to shut someone up is take highly visible action against them. I equate it to a toddler wanting attention and throwing a tantrum. The worst thing you can do is give them attention. It just gives them what they want. When you have politicians out there saying outlandish or inflammatory things, the worst thing you can do is hand them the spotlight.

What needs to happen with MTG is she needs to be put quietly in a corner, given no attention, and given no chances to grab headlines. Then recruit a well funded and well qualified primary challenger.

And then have people show up and vote against her in the primary. She basically was the beneficiary of the same path that put Ocasio-Cortez in Congress; winning a relatively low-turnout primary in a district safely held by that party.

[Jaw]

And then have people show up and vote against her in the primary. She basically was the beneficiary of the same path that put Ocasio-Cortez in Congress; winning a relatively low-turnout primary in a district safely held by that party.

I have wondered if most of the primary voters who preferred Cowan stayed home due to COVID. I know several who did. Her primary campaign was a pretty clear indicator of what type of crazy we are all seeing now, so it may just be wishful thinking on my part.

I used to laugh at some coworkers who lived in Cynthia Mckinney's district and tell them they should have their water tested since so many in their district were obviously crazy. So I guess I deserve this.

[striker42]

you living in the area, who is viable ---
who has bought real-estate in the past week?

let me rephrase that, is anyone of consequence in the district speaking out against her ?
even before Jan 6

The best candidate is the guy who stepped down, Tom Graves. He was a well respected member of Congress and could wipe the floor with MTG. Unfortunately, he's probably got his eyes set on either Governor or else the Senate in the future.

I don't think you'll see any Republicans speak out against her here. They know to win the seat they'll need to not agitate the far right crowd that put her in office.

We'll have to see how it goes. I have no doubt the establishment Republicans want her gone and replaced with a more sane Representative. It wouldn't surprise me if a well qualified challenger moved into the district.

[striker42]

I have wondered if most of the primary voters who preferred Cowan stayed home due to COVID. I know several who did. Her primary campaign was a pretty clear indicator of what type of crazy we are all seeing now, so it may just be wishful thinking on my part.

I used to laugh at some coworkers who lived in Cynthia Mckinney's district and tell them they should have their water tested since so many in their district were obviously crazy. So I guess I deserve this.

She was helped by Trump. Even though it was a primary, you had a lot of people on the far right here energized by Trump and so they went out and voted in an election they would not have otherwise.

I'm hopeful you'll see more crossover voting two years from now. After having two years of her as our representative, I'm hopeful more Democrats come out to vote in the Republican primary (something that's allowed here).

[57Brave]

will she last 2 years ?

[striker42]

will she last 2 years ?

If they find that she provided material aid to the Capitol rioters, she wont. If it's just rhetoric, she'll last.

[57Brave]

wondering if since having no House work (see what I did there?) she wont get bored , let the notoriety go to her head and half term it to seek national office.
Ala Palin

she doesn't strike me as someone into the nuts and bolts of legislation

[striker42]

wondering if since having no House work (see what I did there?) she wont get bored , let the notoriety go to her head and half term it to seek national office.
Ala Palin

she doesn't strike me as someone into the nuts and bolts of legislation

I think she's going to spend the next two years networking. She's going to try to set herself up as one of the figure heads for the far right. She'll need to stay in office to stay relevant. The Dems did her another favor by giving her more time to make connections. Adding her to every committee would have been more effective.

[Runnin]

I think she's going to spend the next two years networking. She's going to try to set herself up as one of the figure heads for the far right. She'll need to stay in office to stay relevant. The Dems did her another favor by giving her more time to make connections. Adding her to every committee would have been more effective.

Being a star for the crazies on the right is good business if you can stay a little detached from it. Rush or Alex Jones have the perfect situation to cash in. Politics is a little more risky.

[57Brave]

Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Republican Perversion of ‘Freedom’
She’s playing the victim. Don’t fall for it.

Frank Bruni
By Frank Bruni
Opinion Columnist





The Republican delirium drawing the most attention is the party’s indulgence of Marjorie Taylor Greene as she turns madness into martyrdom. Mustn’t alienate the QAnon caucus! Can’t win elections without ’em, and if Democratic leaders aren’t exactly cannibals and pedophiles, well, they want higher taxes on the affluent and more Americans enrolled in Obamacare, which is pretty much the same thing.

But there was a less noted sequence of events recently that, in its way, said just as much about how lost the party is. As is so often the case in Republican politics, it involved guns.

Many House Republicans have been freaking out, no exaggeration, over the installation of metal detectors along their paths to the House floor. Some of them have pointedly bypassed the devices. Others have railed against them with a righteous fury that would lead you to believe that instead of being checked for lethal weapons, they’re having their Newsmax printouts shredded or being outfitted with muzzles. (Don’t get any ideas.)

Apparently, if you can’t pack heat in proximity to Nancy Pelosi, you’re living in a totalitarian state. That’s not me being sarcastic. That’s Representative Debbie Lesko’s actual interpretation of the events. Lesko, an Arizona Republican, tweeted that the new security screening was proof that lawmakers “now live in Pelosi’s communist America.”

Representative Devin Nunes, apparently forgetting how little trouble he had with Donald Trump’s fondness for Mother Russia, echoed that theme. “I’m not joking — when you talk about the fall of the Soviet Union, what did they start to do?” said Nunes, a California Republican. “They started to crack down. They started to crack down on people, and that’s what you see here.”

I’m not joking: These lawmakers are ridiculous. But they’re ridiculous in ways that illuminate two themes that keep growing brighter — or maybe I should say darker — in Republican politics now. One is the reflexive attempt to divert attention from the florid craziness in their own ranks and own base by screaming “communist,” “socialist” or “radical left.” The other is to claim that they’re protecting freedom when they’re sanctioning nonsense.

I’m more interested in the latter, but first, a look at the former. How did Marco Rubio, emblematic of all the Republican senators who are determined to stay cozy with Trump’s supporters, respond to Trump’s richly earned second impeachment? By saying that the “radical left” was out of control. Mind you, the radical right, bloated by Trump’s fictions and most Republican senators’ silence, orchestrated the deadly events of Jan. 6, but confronting that head-on is of no political use to Rubio. So, instead: socialism! Cancel culture! The radical left!

And Ilhan Omar! House Republicans unwilling to recognize Greene as seriously dangerous and unfit for public office (let alone the House education committee) said that if Democrats were going to go after her, Republicans should go after Omar, a Democratic member of Congress from Minnesota. Equivalences don’t come any falser.

I have real, lingering concerns about the anti-Semitic ring of some of Omar’s tweets and remarks. But I have no memory of her signaling support for the execution of Republican leaders (as Greene has done in regard to Democratic ones), of her publicly harassing the survivor of a horrific crime (à la Greene and one of the Parkland High School students) or of her signing on to a succession of the most out-there conspiracy theories out there (Greene is a platinum-level frequent flier on Crackpot Airlines). These lawmakers are as different as water and kerosene.

Many Republicans immediately accepted Greene’s speech on the House floor on Thursday — during which she disavowed QAnon and the idea that school massacres and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were hoaxes — as a redemptive apology. It was nothing of the kind. She played the victim, deriding “big media companies” and “cancel culture,” and insisting that she “never once said any of the things that I am being accused of today during my campaign” or since being elected. So we’re not supposed to be bothered by the promotion of deeply twisted conspiracies just a few years, not decades, earlier? That would be more foolhardy than forgiving.

“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true,” she said. Allowed to? No, ready to. Eager to. Itching with paranoia and hate, which she then spread.

“I’m a very regular American,” she said. If that’s remotely true, this country is in much bigger trouble than I thought, and I’ve been plenty worried these past four years.

To anyone who didn’t sense the hollowness of her contrition in real time, she proceeded on Friday to tweet that she had woken up “literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons” the Democrats were for granting her a stage and a moment that enhanced her celebrity. For good measure, she denounced “this Democrat tyrannical government.” Then she held a news conference and complained that Democrats “only care about pushing their socialist agenda through. They only care about taking away our freedoms.”

It’s the way she waves the flag of freedom, saying that she fights for it while being denied it, that perhaps enrages me most, because it’s such a perversion of that ideal. Michael Tomasky wrote an excellent column in The Times late last year about the way in which Republicans, who have long branded themselves the party of “freedom,” now use the word and its variants in selective, wrongheaded and destructive ways that wind up endorsing recklessness more than liberty. He noted that John Stuart Mill, “one of the key authors of the Western concept of freedom,” rightly recognized that it must stop short of behavior that harms our fellow citizens.

Removing Representative Greene from her House committee assignments — which the House did on Thursday night by a 230-to-199 vote, with 11 Republicans joining 219 Democrats in favor of her ouster — wasn’t the death of free speech. Greene remains free, as an individual, to spout the bunk she once spouted. But Congress has the right — and, I’d argue, the responsibility — to make crystal clear that such bunk is vile, dangerous and antithetical to anything and everything that democratic government should be about, and to hold Greene to account for her actions. What happened to Republicans’ belief in personal responsibility?

Requiring that people wear face masks in crowded settings in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic doesn’t repress individualism. It protects many individuals, so that they’re free to continue breathing and living. Sensible firearms restrictions aren’t an insult to freedom. They’re a bulwark against bloodshed and chaos, protecting the freedom of high school students and others to go about their days without the constant, gnawing fear of being shot.

That brings us back to those metal detectors in the U.S. Capitol. I can see how — in another, saner country at another, saner time — they might be dismissed as the gratuitous props of a party staging political theater, which is what Republicans accuse Democrats of doing. But context is everything. The new detectors popped up after a violent invasion of the Capitol. Proudly gun-loving Republican members of Congress have bragged about carrying their firearms everywhere and have coddled voters on the far right who espouse violence against Democrats.

In addition to which, why not have the House set a good example for a country that needs as many of them as it can get? On Tuesday night, Democrats insisted on a vote on fines for House members who avoid security screenings. It was part of a measure about rules for the debate over a budget resolution, and it passed, 216 to 210, with all of the Republicans who weighed in — and three Democrats — opposing it.

Representative Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, had previously delivered a floor speech in which he said that the detectors weren’t merely unnecessary. They were “atrocities.” Once upon a time, that word had meaning. But then, once upon a time, “freedom” did, too

[57Brave]

Elizabeth Warren
@ewarren
·
1h
Four years ago tonight, Mitch McConnell silenced me on the Senate floor because I tried to read a letter from Coretta Scott King.

He was trying to tell an entire movement to sit down and shut up.

Nevertheless, we persisted.

And now, he doesn’t get to call the shots anymore.

[57Brave]

Brian Tyler Cohen
@briantylercohen
·

The Senator from Texas saw a crisis and escaped to the Ritz Carlton in Cancun.

Meanwhile, a congresswoman from New York - whom that TX Senator regularly uses as a punching bag - just raised a million dollars for Texans.

One party works for you. The other works for themselves.

[goldfly]

[sturg33]

Brian Tyler Cohen
@briantylercohen
·

The Senator from Texas saw a crisis and escaped to the Ritz Carlton in Cancun.

Meanwhile, a congresswoman from New York - whom that TX Senator regularly uses as a punching bag - just raised a million dollars for Texans.

One party works for you. The other works for themselves.

Your weird silence on dem governors demanding staying at home for safety while they travel is proof you're a great authority on this topic!

[57Brave]

Show me one that left a dog alone for at least a week in a house with no heat.
A month after gving a wink and a nod to a capital takeover.
Ted Cruz to be polite is,was and will always be a special brand of sloppy

Never complain -- never explain was the mantra of Lee Atwater.

[57Brave]

In Sen Cruz' absence AOC has raised a bagillion dollars for blankets and food.
That go to Texans

[57Brave]

Oh yeah, this thread is about the 117th congress and the people that inhabit it.
Not governors or judges or random celeberties you seem fond of finding fault.