Attention: Muslim Community Leaders
Within 24 hours, two senior Republicans announced they are calling it quits, Kay Granger (TX) and Ken Buck (CO). She was first elected in 1996 and she’s 80 years old and he was first elected in 2014. Both districts are comfortably red, hers includes the whiter half of Fort Worth plus the western suburbs of Tarrant and Parker counties (R+12) and his the 21 counties that make up the Plains of eastern Colorado (R+13), primarily Douglas, Larimer, Weld and a lot of deep red rural emptiness.
Granger, who helped block Jim Jordan from becoming speaker, served longer than any other woman, or Texan, in the House GOP conference and is currently the House Appropriations chair, a position she was terming out of next session. She had a MAGA primary opponent, John O’Shea who’s been attacking her savagely— a prime example of “what is wrong with the country,” he said, noting that “We have a ruling class of political professional politicians and this oligarchy does not care about their constituents.” She started her career as a moderate, even supporting abortion rights, but as the district turned into a right-wing hellhole, she “became” more and more conservative and, of course, an opponent of women’s choice.
The Ken Buck story is slightly more interesting. He’s further to the right, although she went along— in fear— with the MAGAts more than he did, at least lately. He was also chairman of the Colorado RepublicanParty until 2021.Yesterday, Carl Hulse quoted Buck saying that “We lost our way. We have an identity crisis in the Republican Party. If we can’t address the election denier issue and we continue down that path, we won’t have credibility with the American people that we are going to solve problems.” That sentiment, plus his crusade for anti-trust legislation (usually the realm of progressive reformers and somewhat strange for a Republican) has put him at odds with Trump, the House “Freedom” Caucus and the whole GOP Conference. He’s also been complaining about the bullshit impeachment investigation into Biden and has been grousing about looking for another job, like working for CNN.
In a Washington Post editorial, he wrote that his own party is “relying on an imagined history,” calling the facts cited by Republicans “fictitious” and emphasizing the gravity of an impeachment inquiry. “The House is back in session, and Americans are getting an up-close look at Washington’s dysfunction. We are barreling toward a government shutdown without making progress on cutting our out-of-control spending. Yet Republican leadership has decided to divert attention to an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.”
Like Granger, he voted against Jim Jordan’d bid to become speaker, but it was a weightier move for him, since he and Jordan are members of the “Freedom” Caucus. It’s worth noting that in 2021 when Marjorie Traitor Greene, who was subsequently kicked out of the Freedom Caucus tried to form a MAGA caucus within the caucus— along with neo-Nazi Paul Gosar and Barry Moore and rebel-without-a-cause Matt Gaetz— which Greene said was meant to preserve “anglo-saxon political traditions,” it was Ken Buck who publicly slammed their hatefulness.
Buck, wrote Hulse, “said he had decided to step aside because his differences with the contemporary Republican Party had grown too great to continue serving in its ranks. He condemned his party’s reluctance to take on big issues and said it had badly damaged itself with voters… Buck’s decision comes after several months in which his frustration and dissatisfaction with his party have been evident… Debbie Lesko, Republican of Arizona, announced that she would leave Congress after her current term, declaring that, ‘Right now, Washington is broken.’ Buck, one of eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to oust Mr. McCarthy, is also the second GOP member of Congress to break publicly with his party in announcing he would not run again, and to denounce the cultural dominance of the hard right and its continuing allegiance to Trump. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, announced in September that he would not seek a second term, saying the “Trump wing of the party talks about resentments of various kinds and getting even and settling scores and revisiting the 2020 election.”
…He also faulted Republicans on foreign policy and said the party has strayed far from the ideological underpinnings of Ronald Reagan, with many of his Republican colleagues failing to recognize the need to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
“If America is not strong, the world’s in chaos,” he said. “It’s not just in our interest to be there. The world depends on a big brother out there making sure people don’t fight.”
There’s no place for that kind of thinking in MAGA Mike’s House Republican Conference. Another Republican, far to the left of either Granger or Buck, wrote the perfect description Trump in 2015, noting that he is “a mean, angry, vicious person” and a “remorseless expert in manipulating... bigotry.” The following year, before the election 2016, Saletan called Trump “a clear and present danger” with “little regard for human rights or the Constitution,” later accusing Trump of 10 offenses that in his view rendered the candidate unfit for the presidency, including “banning Muslims,” “stereotyping Latinos,” “practicing group blame against blacks,” “inciting violence,” “advocating torture,” “rationalizing plunder” and “targeting civilians” in proposed military strikes. During Trump's presidency, Saletan wrote additional articles accusing Trump of bigotry, collaboration with Russian President Vladimir Putin, service to other dictators against the United States and fatal mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.
I’m not certain if he’s still a Republican or not but yesterday, writing for the anti-Trump Republican Bulwark, Will Saletan noted that the Republican Party of the Bush era “is gone. On Saturday, the GOP’s eight remaining viable presidential candidates… spoke in Las Vegas at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Several portrayed America as a Judeo-Christian nation committed by affinity or duty to Jewish dominion in the Holy Land. Some explicitly opposed humanitarian aid to Gaza; none defended it. Some rejected all Gazan refugees as toxic and inadmissible. Almost without exception, the candidates insisted that Israel should be unconstrained in its military operations.”
Saletan wants his readers to know that he’s Jewish, believes in Israel and was “aghast at what Hamas did to so many innocent people on October 7. I strongly support the use of force against the killers. But as thousands of innocent people die in Gaza— not as targets, but as victims of relentless bombardment in a war they didn’t choose— I can’t accept the bigotry, zealotry, and callousness these candidates are espousing. They aren’t standing up against ruthless religious violence. They’re promoting it.” These are the themes the Republican candidates went on about that Saletan took umbrage at:
America supports Israel’s territorial claims because we accept the Hebrew Bible
Israel should exact vengeance for October 7
We should send no humanitarian aid to Gaza
The United States should accept no refugees from Gaza
Only Hamas can be blamed for death or suffering in Gaza
Israel should act without restraint
Israel should match the enemy’s ruthlessness
Israel is entitled to rule all of Palestine
Perhaps Muslim community leaders— and progressives— who are threatening to abandon Bide over the Israel-Gaza war should read that carefully. “What the Republican candidates are advancing, in sum,” wrote Saletan, “is an abandonment of morals. They’re rationalizing bigotry and cruelty—withholding humanitarian aid, barring child refugees, bombing Gaza without limits— and they’re grounding America’s loyalty to Israel in Jewish and Christian scripture. This isn’t the way to build an alliance against terrorism. It’s the way to feed a religious war.”
We’re going to need a lot more Republicans than Ken Buck and Kay Granger leaving this party before anything is going to be addressed in terms of this primitive mindset that puts humanity itself in danger.