GOP quiet after Gosar’s little speech in Florida

Arizona’s most shocking story today isn’t the fact that an Arizona congressman spoke at a white nationalist conference on Friday night.

It isn’t that he then posed for pictures with the event organizer, a guy who lamented the loss of the country’s “white demographic core” and proclaimed the events leading up to the Jan. 6 riot at the nation’s Capitol as “awesome.”

It’s the silence pouring forth from the Arizona Republican Party that is absolutely stunning.

Gosar has long been known for living out there on what used to be the party’s fringe. Used to be.

He’s the congressman who told us the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., was really a left-wing plot masterminded by an Obama sympathizer to make Donald Trump look bad.

The congressman who last year sent out 23 coded tweets laying out a conspiracy theory about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier/child sex trafficker found dead in his Manhattan prison cell in August 2019.

The congressman who promoted an astonishing number of baseless claims about a stolen election in 2020 and helped organize at least one “Stop the Steal” rally with his pal Ali Alexander. One who, according to Alexander, helped “scheme up” the Jan. 6 rally that led to the deadly Capitol attempt to stop Congress from certifying the election results.

Now he’s paling around with white nationalists and the response of his fellow Republicans is ... silence?

It began on Friday when Gosar sent word to the House that he wouldn’t be physically present for a vote on COVID-19 relief due to “the ongoing public health emergency.” A few hours later, he turned up in Orlando, Fla., to speak to the America First Political Action Conference.

In the days leading up to the event, America First founder Nick Fuentes announced that there would be a special guest at his conference. Then he delivered on that promise, landing Gosar as his headliner.

It’s a big score, after all, for white nationalists to lure a sitting member of Congress to their stage, something they can promote as a a signal of tacit support for their movement.

No other elected official appeared at the event.

Gosar gave the evening’s keynote speech, waxing on about immigration and Donald Trump’s loss and social media censorship.

“I suggest that senators and members of Congress that fail to put America first should be held accountable at the ballot box,” Gosar told the group. “This is the era of America first, not some reincarnation of neocon control.”

He was immediately followed by Fuentes, who warned that “white people are done being bullied” by groups like Black Lives Matter, which he said wants to create “a new racial caste system in this country, with Whites at the bottom.”

Fuentes said America needs to protect its “white demographic core.” He also boasted about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and resulting delay in the certification of election results.

“While I was there in D.C., outside of the building, and I saw hundreds of thousands of patriots surrounding the U.S. Capitol building and I saw the police retreating ... I said to myself: ‘This is awesome,’ ” Fuentes said, as the crowd applauded.

Fuentes and Gosar posed for pictures along with former Rep. Steve King, the Iowa Republican who in 2019 wondered aloud when the term “white supremacist” became offensive.

On Saturday morning, Gosar tried to repair the damage that comes (should come?) with hanging out with white nationalists.

“I denounce when we talk about white racism,” he said, while appearing on a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “That’s not appropriate.”

You know what’s also not appropriate?

For a sitting member of Congress (or anyone else) to lend support to Fuentes and his growing group of white nationalists by serving as their keynote speaker.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Gosar justified his speech as outreach to new blood for the GOP.

“There is a group of young people that are becoming part of the election process and becoming a bigger force,” Gosar said. “So why not take that energy and listen to what they’ve got to say?”

Perhaps, Rep. Gosar, because what they've got to say is dangerous and history shows that their way ends in disaster?

So where is the condemnation from

Gosar’s fellow party leaders, the ones who insist the lunatic fringe is not taking over the once-Grand Old Party?

I note that Rep. Andy Biggs had nothing to say about Gosar’s foray onto the white nationalists’ stage. Nor did Reps. Debbie Lesko or David Schweikert.

I wouldn’t expect Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward to try to distance the party from Gosar but what about the party’s real leader, Gov. Doug Ducey?

This is an easy call for a party that insists that it is not the party of white supremacy.

It's a grade A opportunity to proclaim that the Holocaust deniers and Confederate flag carriers and white nationalists who laid siege to the nation’s Capitol will not similarly run riot over the Republican Party.

Here we have a sitting United States congressman keynoting a conference organized by a white nationalist.

And the silence? It’s pretty about right now.

loud

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