The Real Reason Republicans Didn’t Vote To Impeach
I must say, seeing Rep. Greene, who had only been in Congress for ten days at that point, wear a mask that read “censored” as she spoke on the floor of Congress really summed up how Republicans have been acting recently. Republicans are the kind of people who get on the floor of Congress, during a hearing that was being broadcast on all twenty-four-hour news networks, and complain about being censored. I should also note that she does, in fact, have a Twitter account that has not been taken down, so who it is that’s censoring her is anyone’s guess.
Of course Greene, who personally believes in the absurd Q-Anon conspiracy theory (although she has since distanced herself from it for political reasons), was one of 197 Republicans who voted against impeaching Trump. To be honest, I cannot blame her considering this is what she thinks of the soon-to-be former President:
There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it.
Rep. Jim Jordan also went on the floor of Congress, except he spent his time talking about the history of flight — which, to be fair, is both interesting and irrelevant.
It should be noted that ten Republican Congressmen, including the third-highest ranking House Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney, voted to impeachment President Trump. Four House Republicans, including Rep. Dan Crenshaw, just did not show up. Although Crenshaw has defended Cheney on Twitter, it’s unclear why, if he believed this so strongly, he didn’t even go to Washington in order to vote for impeachment. (I should also note that Crenshaw signed a letter supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania.) In truth, Crenshaw is just another grifter who will become whatever it is the Republican party needs him to be.
On the question of if Trump incited these riots, I would say the answer is easily yes. Trump knows how diehard his supporters are, so he should realize he needs to pick his words very carefully. Telling them to storm to the capitol in large numbers is not picking his words carefully, even if he made a token comment about how they should be peaceful. Remember, these people think Trump is the only one standing between them and a one-world-government ran by Satan worshipping pedophiles.
That’s the thing with the claims of Q-Anon, if they were right (they’re not) than what we saw on 1/6/2021 would have been amazing. A bunch of grassroots citizens teaming up to stop an election from being stolen from the only man fighting a group of Satanists and pedophiles. Had even one of these claims been true, what they did would have made them the modern founding fathers — shame it’s not and they just looked like the modern Whisky Rebellion.
Of course, Q-Anon is nothing more than an extension of Pizzagate, which argued that certain code-words in the leaked emails of Hillary Clinton proved that she, Barack Obama, John Podesta, and many other top Democrats were pedophiles. The reason why Comet Ping Pong was chosen as the hub for this child sex trafficking was because its owner is James Alefantis — the boyfriend of top Democratic fundraiser and creator of Media Matters For America David Brock. In December 2016, when a man from North Carolina went to Comet Ping Pong with a gun to try and find the children — he found nothing because this is all utter nonsense.
I should also note that while the Pizzagate theory is commonly traced back to Alex Jones, not even Jones would back up many of their important claims. One of the key parts of Pizzagate was that the word “hotdogs,” when found in e-mails either from or to these people, meant male underaged children. During his first appearance on Joe Rogan, Jones made it clear that he did not believe it was a reference to young boys, but instead to male prostitutes President Obama was seeing. Jones also was one of the people pushing the odd conspiracy theory that former First Lady Michelle Obama is a secret male-to-female transgender person. One that managed the odd task of being only a tad nonsensical, but also rather irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. (It should be noted that one could spot some transgender porn when Jones showed his phone in one edition of his program — hey, no judging here.)
However, it is worth noting that many Republicans do believe that Trump incited it, but that it was also justified. Early in the morning of 1/6/2020, Lauren Boebert tweeted “Today is 1776,” clearly endorsing something similar to the violence that would occur. (In fact, the apologists for the storm, most notably Liberty Hangout and Jon Miller, used the American Revolution as a point of comparison.) Boebert is open about the fact that she brings a gun to Congress and is not unwilling to use it (odd she couldn’t use it to put down those lawless rioters).
Some will play games, such as Kevin McCarthy who does blame Trump, but doesn’t want him to be punished (a position also shared by Karl Rove). Ted Cruz is currently going on about unity (this from one of the most contrarian and polarizing members of the US Senate) as if these people weren’t the violent rioters the Republican Party has spent months painting Black Lives Matter as. Both Cruz and Josh Hawley have said that they disagree with their tactics, but support the cause because they “have concerns” about the 2020 election. Of course, saying you disagree with the tactics of a revolution after a rigged election just makes you look like you agree with them but are too much of a massive coward to admit it.
Since then, we have also found that a handful of Congressional Republicans gave tours of the capitol building on 1/5/2021 — the day before the riots took place. A number of people present at the tours also were in the riots, funny how that works out. The claim comes from Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Blue Dog from the state of New Jersey, who saw Republicans giving “Reconnaissance” tours of the capitol the day before it was stormed. While these claims have yet to be investigated in greater detail, the fact it comes from a moderate Democrat who did not even support impeachment at first lends to its creditability.
As it stands, one thing is clear; The Republican Party does agree with the actions we saw on 1/6/2021. Maybe they don’t agree with this or that tactic, but the overall point they made is one they endorse wholeheartedly. The Republican Party is not split between the reasonable and the irrational, but the insane and the insane with some amount of self control.
