More GOP Lawmakers Voted To Punish Liz Cheney Than Marjorie Taylor Greene

Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:58 pm

The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her committee assignments, but the partisan breakdown of the vote shows that the GOP largely stood behind the QAnon congresswoman.

While it’s a positive development that 11 Republican lawmakers voted to penalize Greene, there were still nearly 200 who used their votes to defend her.

In other words, the Republican Party is largely standing up and saying they support a member of Congress who promotes violence and dangerous conspiracy theories – just as long as they have an ‘R’ next to their name.

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As MSNBC’s Joy Reid said after the vote, “The other story here is that 199 Republicans voted to back Greene despite a recent past that includes physical threats against other members of Congress, including the Speaker.”

“House Republicans … will now be defined as supporting someone who backed calls for assassinating Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” the MSNBC host added.

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Reid said:

The House of Representatives voted to strip Georgia congresswoman and QAnon devotee Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee posts. But the other story here is that 199 Republicans voted to back Greene despite a recent past that includes physical threats against other members of Congress, including the Speaker. It is another chapter in the tale of two parties – one focused on accountability and one that cowers in fear of its apparently extremist base. The sad truth is that Democrats in Congress had to discipline Margie Q Greene because House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was unwilling to do so himself. McCarthy was willing to hold a secret ballot on the fate of Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, his own third in command who received a resounding if anonymous show of support to remain in Republican leadership last night, but he couldn’t muster the courage to reject the QAnon congresswoman. With this vote tonight, House Republicans, many of whom stood up and gave Greene a standing ovation in a caucus meeting yesterday, will now be defined as supporting someone who backed calls for assassinating Speaker Nancy Pelosi and threatened the non-white women members of the squad in social media ads.  

The GOP was more angry over Cheney’s impeachment vote than Greene’s violence promoting

On the Republican side of the aisle, there was more anger directed toward those who voted to impeach Donald Trump than those who incited a terrorist attack on the Capitol last month.

In fact, more than five times as many Republicans voted to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership post than to strip Greene of her committee assignments, as Ryan Lizza pointed out.

Instead of standing up and saying violence has no place in the federal government, from the White House to Congress, the vast majority of the GOP made it clear (again) on Thursday that they don’t believe members of their party should be held accountable for inciting violence and spewing dangerous conspiracies.

The fact that so few Republicans were willing to condemn violent rhetoric is just the latest example of how broken the GOP is.

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