Stripping of Gosar was a mistake

I have no objection to Democrats in Congress censuring Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar for an anime cartoon depicting him slaying Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.

I wouldn’t even have an objection if Gosar had been booted from office, so vile was his offense.

However, if Gosar is to remain in Congress, it was wrong for Democrats to strip him of his committee assignments. That deprives his constituents of equal representation in the body.

And it invites retaliation if Republicans take over the House after the 2022 election.

Gosar claims that the video is a metaphor for open-borders immigration. According to Gosar, he wasn’t figuratively slaying Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Biden. He was slaying and attacking the idea of open-borders immigration, which Ocasio-Cortez and Biden were figuratively representing.

Gosar’s defense against censure was twofold. He has a First Amendment right to make his points the way he wants to make them. And the cartoon was just a cartoon. It wasn’t an incitement to violence.

But the question before the House wasn’t whether the cartoon violated the First Amendment. The question was whether it constituted unacceptable conduct by a member of Congress.

The First Amendment doesn’t give Gosar the right to serve in Congress. Or to say anything that might be protected by the First Amendment as a member of Congress, particularly with respect to another member of the body or the president of the United States.

Comity in Congress is pretty much a dead letter. However, even in our hyperpartisan times, it is reasonable to draw lines regarding communications with and about other members. Regardless of where that line is drawn, depicting the killing of a fellow member and an attack on the president would be beyond it. Saying that it was a metaphor doesn’t save it.

Nor does saying that it was just a cartoon. Whether the cartoon constituted an incitement to violence, as the censure motion alleges, isn’t really the point, or shouldn’t be the point. What Gosar did was vile enough to warrant censure, even expulsion, irrespective of whether it motivated, or could motivate, anyone else to do anything else.

Expulsion would have required a two-thirds vote, which, given the GOP defense of Gosar, wasn’t obtainable. So, the Democrats, with the support of just two Republicans, decided to censure Gosar.

And, as punishment, strip him of all committee assignments. Gosar previously served on the Natural Resources and Oversight and Reform Committees.

The Constitution provides that each chamber of Congress “may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour ...”

However, the constitutional order assumes equal representation in the House. There is no contemplation of second-class representatives with fewer rights and privileges than others.

In another era, stripping a member of committee assignments would have been much more consequential. The committees used to be the legislative workhorses of Congress, where bills were forged in debates and deliberations between the members.

Today, they are mostly stages for political theater. The members keelhaul people before public hearings. There is no attempt by the members to elicit information or perspective that might inform their lawmaking. Instead, the witnesses are props for pompous speeches and tendentious questions without any true interest in the answers.

Nevertheless, the constituents in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District, represented by Gosar, have as much of a right to a House member who fully participates in congressional proceedings as the constituents in New York’s 14th Congressional District, represented by Ocasio-Cortez.

In both chambers of Congress, traditionally committee assignments have been the prerogative of the respective political parties. In the House, however, Democrats have now denied any committee assignment for two Republicans, Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I used to think that the Republican Party would have to undergo a rehabilitation before the body politic would trust it again with power, some sort of purging of the excessive bile of the Donald Trump years.

However, there’s a real possibility that an unrehabilitated GOP will take over the House next election.

Vindictiveness is a Trumpian trademark. If Republicans take over, there will inevitably be a strong movement among Trumpeteers to retaliate by stripping some Democratic representatives of their committee assignments.

Kevin McCarthy, the probable speaker in such a scenario, has neither the conviction nor the spine to stand up to such a movement. If Republicans have the votes, it is likely to happen.

Thus the degradation of the House continues apace.