LA Times Column: “Each had a chance to stand up for what is honest and right. Each failed to do so.”
In case you missed it, an LA Times column eviscerated California House Republicans that voted in favor of far-right extremist Jim Jordan for speaker — and explained why voters shouldn’t let them forget it.
John Duarte, David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Ken Calvert, Michelle Steel, Kevin Kiley, and Young Kim “had a chance to stand up for what is honest and right.” Instead “each failed to do so,” choosing “tribal loyalty above the country’s best interests,” and casting their votes in favor of Jordan.
Jordan has demonstrated his extremism time and again — from his continued efforts to subvert the 2020 election and key role leading up to the January 6th insurrection, to his career-long obstructionism and failure to ever pass a bill into law — but that wasn’t a problem for these California Republicans.
The Los Angeles Times: These California Republicans voted for Jim Jordan and against the good of the country. Remember their names
Mark Barabak | October 17, 2023
- On Tuesday, 11 of California’s 12 GOP House members put tribal loyalty above the country’s best interests and heedlessly cast their votes to make Jim Jordan — election denier, Jan. 6 instigator, political pyromaniac — the next House speaker.
- Each had a chance to stand up for what is honest and right. Each failed to do so.
- Memories of Jan. 6, 2021, the most grievous attack on our democracy since the Civil War, may have faded in the past many months. It’s easy with that passage of time and the fog of partisan conflict to lose moral clarity. So here’s a refresher: Jordan not only condoned President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and reject its legitimate outcome but actively plotted with the pouty president to do so. The result was the deadly assault on Congress and first attempted coup in the nation’s history.
- And the reward for Jordan’s treachery is to elevate him to the speakership? Duarte, Garcia and the rest must think so, perversely enough.
- There are plenty of good reasons to oppose Jordan’s bid.
- He faces credible allegations he ignored the sexual abuse of college athletes while working as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University.
- His legislative record is not only barren — in 16 years in Congress, he has never had a bill signed into law — it’s replete with acts of political sabotage. That’s not some partisan attack.
- John A. Boehner, a former Republican House speaker, called his fellow Ohioan a “legislative terrorist” and said he had never seen “a guy who spent more time tearing things apart — never building anything, never putting anything together.”
- But setting aside those glaring defects, what is singularly, unequivocally disqualifying is Jordan’s attempts, at Trump’s beckoning, to subvert an election that even Trump officials called the most secure in American history. All the talk of voter fraud, ballot-stuffing and other alleged subterfuge — which Jordan has widely promoted — is pure bunk.
- Just imagine: If Jordan prevails and lasts long enough in the position — a dubious proposition given Republicans’ penchant for political cannibalism — he would preside over certification of the 2024 election. That would allow for all kinds of tampering and mischief.
- In recent days there has been lots of talk among Jordan supporters of being “team players,” as if partisan loyalty trumps (forgive the pun) what is best for the country. And there has been all sorts of faux urgency about the need to elect a speaker so the House, leaderless since McCarthy’s defenestration, can get back to business. But that only speaks to the seemingly limitless capacity of House Republicans to take a bad thing and make it worse.
- When you drive a car into a ditch, do you summon an auto crusher to pull it out?
- Come 2024, remember the names and misplaced loyalties of those California lawmakers who voted to install an insurrection-backing, integrity-lacking Trump toady as head of the body that calls itself the People’s House.
- Hold them to account.
- Stand up for first principles.
- Stop the crazy.
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