Rep. Ted Deutch: ‘There are not words’
It should never have come to this. But it did, and Republicans must live with the consequences.
Addressing the House Rules Committee from his D.C. apartment, Rep. Ted Deutch read off the names of all 17 victims of the Parkland shooting. He did so in alphabetical order, beginning with Alyssa Alhadeff and concluding with Peter Wang.
It was Wednesday afternoon. Deutch was arguing the case for why Democrats in Congress had to revoke two House committee assignments from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly elected Republican from North Georgia, in the face of the Republicans’ refusal to confront her outrageous conduct.
“There are not words in the English language to properly describe how the remarks of Ms. Greene makes these communities feel,” Deutch said. “They are still suffering. They will suffer forever, and this makes it so much worse.”
His words should be required reading in every school civics course in America.
“One of our most basic individual obligations is to uphold the public’s trust in democratic institutions, including this very body where we work,” Deutch said. “It would be impossible to maintain civic confidence in the integrity of the House if we were to normalize Ms. Greene’s behavior.”
Among Greene’s many other statements that were racist, antisemitic or encouraged mass violence, such as “liking” a Facebook post that called for the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she agreed with a post that called Parkland and other shootings “false flag events.” Greene backtracked about Parkland after a discussion a week ago with Linda Beigel Schulman, mother of teacher Scott Schulman, a Parkland victim.
Despite her horrific hate speech, House Republican leaders decided Greene deserved to be on the Education and Labor Committee, where she would have helped set policy for every school in America, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Deutch, a Democrat from Boca Raton who represents Parkland, reminded his colleagues how much pain and anguish Greene’s words and thoughts have caused — not to mention her aggressive stalking of Parkland survivor David Hogg, calling him a “coward” for ignoring her, an “idiot” and a “crisis actor.”
All of it was too much even for Fox’s Sean Hannity, who said on TV this week:
“I’m sorry. I don’t go there. I think kids are off the table.”
Three House Republicans in the Florida delegation, all from Miami-Dade, were among the 11 GOP members who broke with their party and sided with the Democrats. They were the veteran Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and two freshmen: Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez.
“When she goes after students, victims and survivors of senseless gun violence as in the case of the Parkland high school shooting, she loses all credibility as someone assigned to crafting policies in protection of children from violence,” Gimenez said.
So much madness surrounded this controversy that it was seen as a small sign of progress that Greene, in a 10-minute speech on the House floor, conceded that, yes, the 9/11 attacks really did happen, and that school shootings were “absolutely real.” She did use the word “regret,” but stopped short of an apology.
Stripping Greene of two committee assignments no doubt strikes a lot of Deutch’s constituents as a slap on the wrist, and some Democrats in Congress feel the same way.
Deutch was not the only South Florida lawmaker who played a role in disciplining Greene. The sponsor of the House resolution (H.R. 72) was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. She listened as Republicans twisted themselves into knots in arguing why punishing Greene would set a bad precedent, because she made many of the remarks before she was elected.
“When you don’t have a leg to stand on, you argue process,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Some other names must be entered into the record here. They are Florida’s 13 Republican members of Congress who refused to hold Greene accountable.
They can prattle on all they want about “process,” but they voted to sanction Greene’s behavior. Here are all 13 in alphabetical order: Reps. Gus Bilirakis, Vern Buchanan, Kat Cammack, Byron Donalds, Neal Dunn, Scott Franklin, Matt Gaetz, Brian Mast, Bill Posey, John Rutherford, Greg Steube, Michael Waltz and Dan Webster. All are up for re-election next year.
Democrats will use this vote to tightly bind the members who refused to punish Greene to the unhinged “crackpot caucus” on the party’s far-right wing.
The GOP is no longer the Grand Old Party. It’s Greene’s Offensive Party, the party of limited government and unlimited extremism.