(Dobbs) Where Disorder and Dishonor Are More Urgent Than Death
The true colors of right-wing Republicans come out. Again.
What’s the logical first step for the Tennessee House to take after three nine-year-olds and three staff members were shot to death ten days ago in a Nashville school?
Well, dominated as it is by a gun-loving Republican majority, their first step is to expel two Democratic members who, on the heels of thousands of schoolchildren marching to the state capitol after the massacre to call for better gun control, took to the floor of the House with a bullhorn to support them, demanding a ban on assault weapons. An AR-15 was involved in the Nashville shooting.
But according to the Republicans, this was “disorderly behavior” by the Democrats who brought “dishonor to the House of Representatives.” Apparently this is serious enough that they weren’t just censured, which might seem like a more appropriate punishment to fit the crime. No, they were stripped of their committee assignments in the House, then two of the three who were accused of disorderly and dishonorable conduct— the two African-American men who protested— were thrown out of it. (A third, a woman, narrowly kept her seat). Evidently in the minds of the majority, dishonor is a more urgent crisis to deal with than death.
This is contemptible on so many levels.
First, because what the right-wing Republicans didn’t do in the wake of the mass murder was take up gun control. Which is no surprise, really. Two years ago the Tennessee legislature decreed that citizens no longer even need a permit to pack a gun in public, whether out-in-the-open or concealed. People already can buy their guns in Tennessee with no requirement for a background check. Now there’s a new bill to lower the legal age to carry a handgun from 21 to 18. As for any legislation after the shootings, Republican leadership already has said it won’t happen this year.
But the Republicans wasted no time putting the Democrats on trial for breaking, as the Republican Speaker put it, “several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor.” In other words, when they went to the front of the House with a bullhorn, their crime was that they spoke out of turn. Their crime was that they didn’t have the Speaker’s permission. Their crime was that they disrupted the orderly proceedings of the House. Do you get it? They broke no law, they only broke a rule. But according to a tweet from the Speaker, “We cannot allow the actions of the three members to distract us from protecting our children.”
That would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. The Speaker and his allies haven’t lifted a finger to protect the children. All they offered after three more died in Nashville was the now-familiar Republican remedy: more thoughts and prayers.
This was only the third time ever that the Tennessee House has expelled its own members. The first was a representative accused of sexual assault. That’s serious. The second was another representative convicted of taking a bribe. That’s serious too. But this time, elected representatives have been expelled for exercising their First Amendment right to protest inaction on gun reform. That’s what got them thrown out. Tennessee’s House Republicans are big fans of the Second Amendment, but when it comes to the First Amendment, not so much.
The Speaker sees it differently. He told a radio interviewer that the Democrats’ behavior on the House floor last week was designed “to incite riots or violence.” He even had the gall to compare them to the rioters on January 6th. “What they did today was equivalent, at least equivalent, maybe worse depending on how you look at it, of doing an insurrection in the Capitol.”
For the sake of precision, here’s that “insurrection” in Tennessee.
Compare that to the real one in Washington. The true colors of today’s right-wing Republicans have come out. Again.
One of the representatives who got expelled, Justin Jones, put it all in perspective yesterday on CNN. “It’s morally insane that a week after a mass shooting took six precious lives in my community here in Nashville, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, their first action is not to take actions to rein in this proliferation of weapons of war in our streets, but it’s to expel their colleagues for standing with our constituents.”
And not just incidentally, to deprive voters of representation by the people they elected to serve them.
If this isn’t an assault on democracy, I don’t know what is.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Tears, anguish, and utter disbelief regarding those whom we expect to act like caring humans. Just cannot get my head around it . . .
Greg
Well said! I’m not sure that the (once upon a time) “GOP” can sink much lower. These folks might love living in Pyongyang or Beijing or Moscow....