As you undoubtedly know, the House voted yesterday to censure Paul Gosar and, accordingly, relieve him of his two committee seats. His social-media posting of a photoshopped anime in which he appeared as AOC's killer and assaulter of President Biden rendered decent citizens everywhere rightly outraged.
Given that Gosar never so much as apologized and given Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's manifest support for reducing American democracy to late-stage Weimarism, the urgency of Gosar's censure was unquestioned by those of any conscience — which, as contemporaneity would have it, excludes virtually every self-identified Republican. The censure's one downside: Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn weren't lumped in with it.
Watching C-Span before the vote, I heard this from ordinary Republican lunatic Louie Gohmert: "We should not condemn violence, but ..." Another nutcase, Tom Rice of South Carolina, protested that "cartoons routinely depict violence," so why all the fuss?
Said Speaker Pelosi, simply: "We cannot have a member joking about murdering each other or threatening the President of the United States." We can't, though today's Republicans revel in such infantile grotesqueries, excepting only Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, whom the GOP does wish to punish for inquiring about barefaced Trumpian treason. Weird.
Naturally, Republicans are howling that the Gosar censure was nothing but a partisan hatchet job, so characteristic of those sinister Democrats. To that we can smile. Have at it, howl 'til you drop.
That said, we should be aware that Republicans are privately celebrating Gosar's fate. In their vindictive little minds, the Arizona gangster's censure will grant them unlimited freedom of so's your old man, come 2023. Doubtless, they're already contriving a list of tasty Democratic targets, House members who may have sneezed during one of Trump's usual asininities in a SOTU address, or some other such witlessness.
Some Republican senators — especially those with presidentialitis — are also telegraphing this vindictive intent. As one example, two days ago, after wailing on Twitter about the attorney general's jackbooted approach to virtuous parents at wholesome school board melees — a brutish approach that never happened — Cotton unsubtly concluded: "Garland will be held accountable for this." My guess, he'll be impeached, followed by a Senate spectacle meant only for the base's childish amusement.
Therefore, House Democrats, hie thee to Greene, Cawthorn and perhaps others' censure as well — not out of the disloyal opposition's sense of prepubescent antics, but because it's the right thing to do. These treacherous, unAmerican whackjobs quite literally have no business being in the United States House of Representatives.
So clean the House, while you can. The countervailing shit is headed your way anyway.
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Update: As I was writing this yesterday, McCarthy was asked if he might strip certain Democrats — most likely Maxine Waters, Ilhan Omar, Eric Swalwell — of their committee assignments, should he become speaker (he will, of course, reinstate Gosar and Greene). "This [is] about holding people accountable," he answered. "I think the majority is going to have to approve any of those [Democratic] members on the committees of which they could serve."
The war is on.