69 thoughts on “Congress Will Vote On Censure, Stripping of Committees of Representative Paul Gosar”

  1. It’s interesting, and I’ve checked with my sister on this: I come from a family where guns were owned and used, and the idea of using a gun in self-defense or home defense was not foreign but something I knew my father showed intent to do at least once. (He went to the front porch with a shotgun at port arms when some strangers drove up our longish driveway at night).

    AND, not a one of them ever made any kind of threat of violence that they didn’t mean. There was never any, “It’s just talk”. If you said it, that meant you were gonna do it.

    That’s my approach, too. I think it’s healthier.Report

    1. Kinda where I stand, don’t threaten something you aren’t willing to do,. Makes you out to be at best, someone who should not be taken seriously, and at worst, a blowhard with violent fantasies.Report

  2. I am so old that I can remember when it was considered an intolerable breach of decorum for one house member by name. And now here we are.Report

  3. Obviously this is performative fragility, which is a big part of Ocasio-Cortez’s brand. It’s a dumb meme. The message isn’t “I’m going to kill you,” but “These are the bad guys, and I’ll defend the country from them.” The histrionics over this remind me of the pathetic attempts by Democrats and their media shills to link Palin’s crosshairs ad to the shooting of Gabby Giffords by a mentally ill man over a weird personal vendetta stemming from her failure to answer a nonsensical question he had asked her at an earlier date.

    The thing that actually makes this ad problematic is the demonization of immigrants, and Ocasio-Cortez’s attempt to make it all about her is characteristically trashy.Report

    1. I had to watch the video multipie times and still couldn’t find the part where Gosar killed her. It wasn’t until I saw the still frame in the tweet I linked above that I was able to make the connection to a split-second shot in which her face is swapped on to a giant falling down.

      Meanwhile the immigrant-bashing is lengthy and not even a bit subtle, and the title is 移民の攻撃 (attack of the migrants).Report

    2. I knew it would be only a matter of hours before someone defended Gossar!! His own brother and sister think he is a sociopath and went on national TV to say so numerous times. I think that is a pretty bad sign.

      This is not performative frailty. This is one member of Congress all but explicitly stating it is okay to use political violence against an opponent. One he signaled by name and sight.There is a long history of right-wing extremists trying to hide actual and implied violence under the guise of “relax, it is just a joke.”Report

      1. Calm down. You’re hysterical. Again. Or still. For one, I’m not defending him. The immigrant-bashing really is bad. Moreover, I’m only talking about the video. I don’t know enough about Gosar to have an opinion on him in general.

        But nonsense is nonsense. No reasonable person would interpret this as a serious call to violence against Biden or Ocasio-Cortez. Honestly, this is so obvious that I don’t even know how to explain it to you.

        Tell you what: If Paul Gosar or this video is ever credibly linked to the assassination of any Democratic politician, I owe you a Coke.Report

        1. But nonsense is nonsense. No reasonable person would interpret this as a serious call to violence against Biden or Ocasio-Cortez.

          Just like Trump’s words were never seen by reasonable people as a call to attack the Capitol on January 6th?Report

      2. https://nypost.com/2021/11/17/rep-paul-gosar-awaits-fate-as-house-to-vote-on-censure/

        “It is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong and instead decides to venture off into a tangent about gas prices and inflation,” [AOC] said. “What is so hard, what is so hard about saying that this is wrong? This is not about me. This is not about Rep. Gosar, but this is about what we are willing to accept.”

        She makes it all about her by saying “This is not about me.” She displays frailty by going for the throat.Report

  4. Good for Congress. Even if this was just designed to bait liberals as Brandon suggests, its still way over a half dozen lines. Not that censure is stopping the Republican crazies in Congress (I’m looking at you Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor-Greene) but its better then nothing.Report

  5. I don’t think we need to classify this as a “direct threat” or “violence” or anything else to say it warrants an official response.

    How many of you could Tweet the same video featuring yourself and colleagues and have nothing come of it? I sure as hell couldn’t.Report

    1. I agree with this 100%. This would be a firing offense in any other circumstance.

      HERE IS THE PROBLEM

      I think that the only people who can really fire a congressman are voters. (Is that accurate?) The next best thing that a caucus can do is strip seniority or remove a guy from a committee or something. House Leadership can also do stuff like remove people from committees, but I don’t think that they can kick somebody out of the House entirely. Maybe they can refer to House Ethics and, from there, refer to law enforcement and, from there, get the guy thrown in jail (the Rostenkowski option).

      I’m kinda surprised that the Rostenkowski option hasn’t been leaned on more often in the last 25 or so years…

      We can always go lower collaboration, I guess. Take turns throwing House members in jail every two years. (Honestly, the more I think about that, the fewer downsides I see…)Report

      1. I think that the only people who can really fire a congressman are voters. (Is that accurate?)

        A two-thirds majority in either chamber may expel a member. Most recently, Jim Traficant (D-OH) was expelled in 2002 after he was convicted of ten counts of bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion.Report

      2. “House Leadership can also do stuff like remove people from committees…”

        Isn’t this what is happening though?

        There is a lot of room between “Do nothing” and “Expel him” and it seems like that is where his consequences are most likely going to lie.Report

            1. They did what they ought to have done and I imagine that there will be more of a hair trigger for censures and whatnot in the future.

              I mean, on one level, it’d be a good thing for the House to bring back censure on a regular basis. Class up the joint.

              But I also know that this is going to deepen the rift.

              And I am irritated at the tradeoff in the long run, though I appreciate doing the right thing.Report

              1. What deepened the rift: censure? Or his Tweet?

                Because we continue to circle back to the idea that the issue isn’t bad behavior but responding to bad behavior.Report

              2. Please understand, this is another drop in the ocean.

                I don’t know that there was a solution to this particular case that would have done anything but add more drops to the ocean.

                I would like the sea levels to go down instead of us finding new ways to add less water than we might have otherwise.Report

              4. Censure is the part that I think was the good part. As I said, I think that the House using censure more often would probably be a good thing.

                It’s the whole “removal from committee” thing that has me thinking “okay, this game is iterated… what’s the next most logical play?” and then making a sour face.Report

              6. No, it’s not sudden. When I keep iterating the game in my head, it leads to “divorce or war”.

                It’s only sudden if you haven’t been paying attention to the “very slowly” part of “very slowly and then all at once”.Report

              7. Censure without removal would not be effective. Gosar can now be campaigned against on the most basic bread and butter level as ineffective for representing his constituents since he can’t control himself enough to stay relevant and legislate. Absent loosing his committees censure become spitting into the wind for people who are generally immune to public shame.Report

              11. Gaming it out requires looking at all the possible moves each side could make.

                One move is for the Republicans to choose de-escalation and compromise.

                Another is for them to choose further escalation and radicalism.

                And in this game every citizen who votes gets to play, by either rewarding escalation or moderation.

                At this moment it appears they are choosing to reward radicalism and escalation.Report

              19. you really have a strong belief in the goodness and redeemability of these folks don’t you? I mean, 12 steps work for people who want to change and have healthy relationships with shame, guilt, and social pressure.

                Republican politicians don’t have that at all.Report

              27. If/when Republicans take the House/Senate come 2022 (you’ve seen the polls, right), they’re going to reshuffle the membership of the committees.

                I mean, this is just something that happens, right? Well within acceptable boundaries, right? Vae victus, right?

                I guess we should wonder if there are any arguments for why this is okay out of the way beforehand. “If the American people wanted Pelosi in charge of picking who was on the committees, she would be.”Report

              28. That assumes that the American people have any views at all about who should pick who is on committees. It has been done many different ways in the past, and nobody seems to have cared then except the insiders. There’s nothing obviously wrong with the House leader doing the picking, and I doubt that the general public would care if that were how it was done. At least until you asked them. Polling all too commonly creates a public opinion that, often for good reason, did not previously existReport

              29. The American People believe that “My Congressm*n should be on the Ways and Means Committee!”

                The Goo-goos have their own opinions, of course. They’re naïve, though.

                The people who understand power know that it’s the lobbyists who write the bills and the empty suits who walk around the halls of power don’t really matter at the end of the day.

                Vae victus.Report

              30. The American People probably believe no such thing and probably have no idea whether they would want that if they thought about it. And they probably know or care even less how that gets decided. Which was my original point. I don’t see you actually disagreeing with that.Report

              31. “The American People” can’t name their congressm*n. They don’t know what the Ways/Means committee is. They can’t name their senators and have a 50/50 shot at remembering who the VP is.

                That said, if asked “would you prefer your congressm*n to be on the committee that decides who gets stuff?”, they’d probably nod thinking that it beats the alternative.

                That said, “The American People” *ARE* the ones who decide whether The Republicans are in charge of the House or the Democrats are. And if they dislike what the party in power is doing, they have shown very little compunction in recent decades about throwing their own bums out.

                Heck, *PRIMARYING* people in recent years has started happening. Remember when the Republican Whip got primaried? That was nuts!

                And so if your point is that The American People don’t really care about this stuff, only weirdoes like us do… well, I can’t argue with that.

                But weirdoes like us are more and more in charge these days. Let’s hope that The American People don’t notice.Report

              34. What’re you talking about?

                Like, seriously, what is your actual point? You’ve twisted yourself in so many knots here.

                Remember, it’s okay to admit you were wrong.

                This started with you saying Democrats should do something and then snarking when you learned they were actually doing it.Report

              36. They *SHOULD* do something. Censure strikes me as EXCEPTIONALLY APPROPRIATE. (Indeed, I said that I wished that the House would do *MORE* of it.)

                When it comes to kicking people off of committees, that’s something that I see as going to result in it happening more often.

                Like, I am looking at the lay of the land and I am guessing that the Republicans will win back the House (and I haven’t looked at the Senate yet but given a large enough shift in the House, it strikes me as likely that it’ll happen to the Senate too but, again, I haven’t looked at who is up for re-election).

                Which this happens, they will reshuffle the committees. Right? This is uncontroversial, right? And democrats who are currently on the committees will be taken off the committees. Right? This is uncontroversial, right?

                I’m just steeling myself for “can you believe that the Democrats kicked Ilhan Omar off of Foreign Affairs!” and the like.Report

              39. Committees get reshuffled, but its not usually acrimonious. The Ranking Member almost always becomes chair, and the former chair almost always becomes Ranking member due to seniority unless there’s a retirement.

                About the only way Republicans can really reshape committee is decreasing the number of seats the Dems would get in the minority. The Republicans don’t – yet – have the ability to keep people off committees if they get power as the Republicans don’t determine which Dems get a seat, except on Select Committees like the January 6th one. And remember that Speaker Pelosi agreed to three of the five people McCarthy proposed, but that wasn’t good enough so he took his members and stormed off.Report

      2. I also swear that fascists are able to come to power because the broad left will spend weeks arguing amogst themselves about the proper way to respond rather than doing anything else.Report

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