Miami lawmakers right to punish wacko Taylor Greene. But did they do it for the right reason? | Editorial
We’re going to give U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar the benefit of the doubt and believe that each of them voted their conscience. Because, otherwise, we’d have to consider that fear was the real motivating factor.
Thursday night, these three Republican members of Miami-Dade’s congressional delegation went against their increasingly unhinged party and voted to have controversial Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stripped of her House committee assignments on the education and labor committee and the budget committee.
Newly elected, Greene, also a Republican, showed herself to be unfit for public office long before voters in her district astonishingly judged her fit to serve. She has used — and abused — her 15 minutes of fame by becoming the first person elected to Congress publicly carrying QAnon’s tainted water and rancid beliefs into the House chamber. QAnon traffics in mass delusion and conspiracy theories. Believers contend, for instance, that Donald Trump is fighting a covert war against a cabal of satanic child sex abusers. This, about a former president who was pretty tight with Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2018, Greene said she doubted that an airplane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. She’s spread dangerous, anti-Semitic lies. She endorsed executing Democrats.
Massacre staged?
She also agreed with a Facebook comment that the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, in which 17 people died, was a “false flag planned shooting.” A video surfaced of Greene harassing David Hogg and others who survived the Stoneman Douglas shooting as they pushed for gun control in Washington.
That was enough for Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to push for stripping Greene of her committee assignments. Thursday, the final vote was 230 to 199.
“Voting against a member of your own party is never easy, but everyone in Congress must be held to the same high standard,” Salazar said in a statement after the vote, the Herald reported.
But make no mistake: Greene is barely contrite. Rather, she’s making the most of this “victimhood” and, in truth, is campaigning for her 2022 race.
And, in all likelihood, so are Diaz-Balart, Gimenez and Salazar. Not only do they have to gear up for 2022 elections, they will be running in reconfigured districts. Redistricting is one of the results of the 2020 — and every other decennial — U.S. Census.
Salazar vulnerable
That means that the population of voters that propelled them to victory last year might not hold. New constituents might still be appalled that Diaz-Balart and Gimenez voted against certifying some states’ Electoral College results for Joe Biden. They could remember that Salazar and Gimenez mindlessly parroted Trumpian talking points that “my opponent is a socialist.” Though Diaz-Balart — the dean of the Republican delegation who has served in Congress since 2002 — is probably safe, the same can’t be said as resolutely for Gimenez or Salazar. In fact, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has put big money behind an off-election-year ad blitz against Salazar for her vote not to impeach former President Trump after he incited deadly mobs that invaded the Capitol last month: “Republicans like Maria Elvira Salazar voted to protect Trump, letting the QAnon mob win. Congresswoman Salazar should have stood with us, but she was a coward. She stood with Trump and the lies. Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar: She stood with Q, not you.”
That stings.
Like we said, a vote of conscience, we hope. But don’t discount the fear factor.