Texas Republican leaders to party members: It's okay to hobnob with Nazis

It may be hard to believe but this "is NOT a parody," notes The Bulwark about The Texas Tribune's reporting on the latest political madness in the Lone Star State:

"Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers."

Let me repeat that in blunter, truer, more economical words: Republican party leaders voted against banning their colleagues from associating with Nazis. Fuentes is not just a "sympathizer." He's "an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler who has called for a 'holy war' against Jews," notes The Tribune.

"In a 32-29 vote on Saturday," continues the paper, "members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban" — which thereupon implicitly, essentially defined the resolution as a pro-Nazi statement. Can Texas GOP politics get any weirder, reactionary and just plain nuts?

The committee's, ahem, reasoning? Such a debarment could be a "slippery slope," with members arguing that banning "antisemitism" was "too vague or subjective." To them, they said, it sounded like "Marxist" and "leftist" tactics, creating guilt by association. (Pardon me, excusez-moi, Entschuldigung — was it not far-right McCarthyism that made guilt by association a modern political staple?)

Party leaders, however, proceeded boldly; proud of taking a firm and public stand on such a high philosophical principal. Right? Well ... "In a separate move that stunned some members, roughly half of the board also tried to prevent a record of their vote from being kept."

Speaking to The Tribune after the vote, anti-Nazi committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham said of the executive committee's actions: "I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is." Even Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan called the committee's vote "despicable," adding that they "can’t even bring themselves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers." 

I cannot attest to the whereabouts of Ms. Graham and Speaker Phelan over the past few years. But wherever they were, while there they evidently missed what their party was becoming — and now is: a far-right, neofascistic bunch of Trumpian goons who refuse to denounce neo-Naziism for the simple, straightforward reason that that's what what their party stands for.

Which leaves me with only one question for Ms. Graham and Speaker Phelan. If you're opposed to neo-Naziism, why in hell do you stay in the Republican Party?