After a week of efforts to equate the controversial remarks of two particular members of Congress, I pushed back a bit at New York:
It looks like House Republicans are going to deal with outrage over their perennial problem child Marjorie Taylor Greene by finding a Democrat to punish. That would be Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, according to Politico’s Huddle:
“’I think that Ilan should receive the same type of punishment as Marjorie because if it’s good for one, it is good for another,’ Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.), who voted to remove Greene from her committees, told me. ‘Anti-semitism is the same thing as anti-semitism. It’s just that Nancy is afraid …'”
There are others who want to push for Omar’s removal as well as those looking to censure her over her war crimes remarks — and a few Dems may join them.
The idea of equating Omar’s complaints about unequal treatment of countries in investigating military misconduct with Greene’s comparisons of mask and vaccine requirements to the Holocaust is deeply satisfying to a lot of people. Republicans can continue their now-ancient habit of waving away extremism in their ranks by claiming it’s more prevalent on the other side of the aisle. Nervous centrist Democrats can document their nervous centrism by firing thunderbolts left and right. And most of all, accusing both parties of harboring those prone to “false equivalence” appeals to the false equivalence many Beltway media folks want to draw between Democrats and Republicans, who are engaged in the mutually assured destruction of partisan polarization.
There’s only one problem: Treating what MTG and Omar have said as equal expressions of false equivalence actually is false, as any honest evaluation of their words quickly shows. Greene bluntly compared COVID-19 precautions to the Holocaust, analogized vaccine documentation mandates to the Nazi practice of making Jews wear yellow stars, and, for good measure, said Democrats are like Nazis because they are “socialists.” Omar said this in the midst of a virtual exchange with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken over investigations of the brief but intense war between Israel and Hamas:
“’We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity,’ she wrote. “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.’”
Her point wasn’t to say the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban were equally culpable in their commission of atrocities, but that all should be equally subject to international investigation. I suppose there are superpatriots who would dispute the idea that America has ever committed “unthinkable atrocities,” though the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks, and of countless genocidal assaults on Native Americans, among many examples, suggest otherwise. But in any event, when challenged by Republicans and Democrats alike to make it clear she was not imputing equivalent culpability to these various nations and coalitions of fighters, Omar complied instantly:
“U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar said Thursday that she was ‘in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems … ‘
“’To be clear: the conversation was about accountability for specific incidents regarding [International Criminal Court] cases, not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel.’”
MTG, meanwhile, kept doubling down on her comparisons of public-health measures with the slaughter of many millions by Nazi Germany, and finally, after more than three weeks and a tour of the Holocaust Museum, she issued an apology that betrayed little understanding of the full scope of the Holocaust, and then refused to apologize for the Democrat-Nazi analogy.
Looking more broadly at the two women and their records of controversial utterances, Ilhan made an unfortunate and erroneous reference to “the Benjamins,” in a gratuitous comment about support for Israel in the United States, for which she “unequivocally” apologized:
“Anti-semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-semitic tropes. My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be able to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack my identity. This is why I unequivocally apologize.”
Greene lost her committee assignments earlier this year after media focus on an almost incredible blizzard of incendiary statements she made on social media before coming to Congress (barely anyone even noticed her practice of brandishing an AR-15 when discussing her enemies in campaign ads). In February, she apologized for claiming that school shootings were fake and for promoting QAnon conspiracy theories. She never apologized for happily contemplating violence against congressional Democrats (including, very specifically, Ilhan Omar) and the Speaker of the House, or for her unusually aggressive support of Trump’s electoral big lie and the effort in January to overturn the presidential election results, or for her own subscription to very weird anti-Semitic claims.
If you cannot discern a qualitative difference between Omar’s “outrages” and Greene’s, and between the speed and coherence of their clarifications and apologies, it may be time for some remedial work in logic and rhetoric. These two members of Congress aren’t alike at all, and as much as I sometimes disagree with Ilhan Omar, treating her as a left-wing MTG is lazy and just plain wrong.
I’d like to repeat a question that was raised recently at TPM: Where are the surrogates??
Obama is a cool, reserved kind of guy. We may want him to attack more, but that just isn’t his style. He thinks it’s beneath his dignity to respond to stupid attacks with more stupid attacks, and it is. He’d rather laugh off the stupidity and focus on what matters.
But that doesn’t mean someone else shouldn’t be out there making the case and grabbing the media by the lapels. We’ve already heard Biden doing it, but he can’t do it alone either. What if there were a press conference, today, with, say, Hilary Clinton, Claire McCaskill, Brian Schweitzer, and Mark Warner. What if they said, “We’re asking the media, right now: cut it out. Stop doing McCain’s bidding by chasing every stupid issue he tosses to you. Report on the issues. Report on the candidates – on who they really are, and what they’ve done, not on who they want you to think they are.” Just a simple, clear message – then repeated, as nauseam, in speeches, interviews, whatever, around the country, day after day. That’s how the GOP does it – because it works.
The media won’t report on something unless it’s an event. So you have to create the event. And the best resource for creating events are the dozens of well known, well respected Democrats around the country. Don’t leave Barack out there to respond to all this garbage by himself.
How about turning the “elitist” charge against the Republicans?
I’m thinking of a commercial that pans across the faces of Washington and members of his first cabinet–Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, etc.
The image would suggest that the Founders were an elite insofar as they were unusually talented, knowledgeable, and sophisticated.
Even a SERIES of commercials using iconic moments from American history:
Would Lincoln be a Republican today? No. Would Teddy Roosevelt, the Trust Buster, be one? No. Would Ike? Probably not. Is this the same Republican Party the country used to admire? No. (Not since Nixon.)
Use these images from American history both to appeal to patriotism [remember how many people watched the PBS series on the Civil War] and to show that Democrats value talent and want to advance merit, that Obama & Biden belong to that tradition.
But just how do we do so? Isn’t that a catch 22? Especially when they get to attack us without cautious or remorse? If we compliment her, we are confirming the wisdom of the pick, and her fitness for office, but if we attack her, we are attacking working mothers??
What you are missing is how any real or imagined attacks of Palin by Obama put McCain in the sympathetic role of the protective father. They want us to attack Palin, they will create imaginary attacks even if we don’t, and it will work for them.
The only way to attack Palin is in conjunction with McCain, Palin, Bush & Cheney. We have to elevate her to McCain’s level. We have to stand her up before we can knock her down.
Interesting article on Joe Scarborough that has been kept quiet by the MSM!
http://www.truthalliance.net/Archive/tabid/67/a…
Lest, we forget, there would have been no need for a Surge if Bush & Co. had not taken the U.S. into a Phony & Pretend War on Terrorism while the Real War on Terrorism in Afghanistan where Bin Ladin lived, was ignored! And if we do not Wise up this might happen in the future!
http://www.youtube.com/v/PdJUCU1UH2w
In a cleverly pre-emptive strike, McCain is falsely accusing Obama of wanting to teach children sex education — it was to teach children how to protect themselves from sexual predators — because they knew Newsweek will be soon coming out with an article on Sarah Palin! “Judge Warned Palin About Emotional Child Abuse.”