Republicans have a white-supremacy problem. But they don’t seem to think they do | Editorial

A white nationalist conference in Orlando last weekend featured two Republican members of the U.S. Congress. That should shock us. And the GOP should rush to condemn it. But did it? Well, sort of.

The guy running the event, America First leader Nick Fuentes, is a white supremacist, according to the Anti-Defamation League, and a Putin enthusiast. Yet Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, smiling and enthusiastic, took the stage as the star attraction after he introduced her. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who attended the same conference last year, appeared by video.

Fuentes, in a speech to the crowd, noted that Vladimir Putin had been compared to Hitler, and then laughed and added: “They say it’s not a good thing.“ Then he asked for a round of applause for Russia.

This happened just down the road from a different grievance-filled, right-wing conference also held in Orlando last weekend: the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. The leaders of the Republican Party were there, including Donald Trump. Where was the clear and unequivocal rejection of the America First Political Action Conference and all it stands for?

A handful of Republicans spoke out. Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, tweeted that the “silence by Republican Party leaders is deafening and enabling. All Americans should renounce this garbage and reject the Putin wing of the GOP now.”

‘Bizarro world’

Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger — who, like Cheney, has been marginalized by Republicans for criticizing Trump — tweeted that, “If this was not bizarro world” Greene should be the one “censured and excommunicated from the GOP.” Utah Sen. Mitt Romney agreed with Cheney in a TV appearance Sunday on CNN, saying “There’s no place in either political party for this white nationalism or racism. It’s simply wrong.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Greene of “playing footsie” with Fuentes’ “splinter group,” saying that, ”Associating with anti-Semitic neo-Nazis is not consistent with the conservative values I’ve defended for decades.”

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, addressed the issue, though not exactly head-on or by name: “White supremacy, neo-Nazism, hate speech and bigotry are disgusting and do not have a home in the Republican Party,” she told the Washington Post.

Greene, who also attended CPAC, claimed later that she didn’t know what Fuentes’ group stood for when she spoke at the event. She defended her attendance by saying she wanted to reach a young audience. She even threw in a Putin-is-bad comment.

Sorry, we’re not buying.

The Republican Party has a white-supremacy problem. Every time a Gosar or a disingenuous Greene attends an event like the America First conference, it gains a little more of a foothold. That “deafening” silence from those of whom we expect better says that the party is OK with extremists’ bigotry. And all the tweets in the world don’t do a thing to fix it.

This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 6:20 PM.