Stripping him of his committee assignments is a start.
It’s kind of all they can do, right? I don’t think they can actually throw him out of Congress, can they?
It’s not like anyone can say his remarks don’t reflect the will of his constituents. They totally do.
I think they can.
And from the ‘intellectual right’:
They actually have him on tape saying these things.
Evidence isn’t an impediment.
I mean, everyone’s having their hot takes, from Ken White to Matt Yglesias. And they’re easy because they’re very much deserved, to be honest.
But it’s also worth noting that Steve King was plenty racist and awful under Paul Ryan especially as the party leader in the House, and certainly under Boehner as well. Neither did anything. And so perhaps this is just a speck swept under the rug that means nothing. But if the Republicans want to start clawing their way out of the demographic hole they’ve dug themselves since…yikes, my adult lifetime as I think of it, the steps to doing so are probably going to be tiny, come with well-earned ridicule and heavy suspicion, and be in fits and starts. And they may have to be something procedural and wrist slappy like this, too…but maybe they’re a start, as well.
/dons flame retardant suit…
It’s something. Not much, but more than nothing.
Yeah, the journey of a thousand miles and all that.
I mean, it’s just as likely that they’ll continue to do awful shit, and engage in half-measures and coy nonsense, too.
Did y’all talk about the Tucker Carlson monologue that has been getting the chatterers on the right chatterering even more lately?
I personally find Tucker Carlson a little gross, but I find basically everyone in TV opinion-land at least a little gross.
But he’s challenging the Republican party for its near-religious worship of markets, and someone had to do it. I don’t know that this qualifies as the kind of “non-insane center-right” that this thread was created to talk about–typically that means “get these social conservatives out of my enlightened libertarian paradise”–but there’s plenty of extremism on the economic right as well, particularly related to the idea of “justice.” See also, “income inequality” and the plight of the Rust Belt.
There’s nothing “conservative” about consumer capitalism. It’s a recent invention, it’s bolstered by heavy-handed governmental action at the federal level (supported by both parties), and it’s become a veritable scourge in the last decade for everyone but the wealthiest. I don’t even know what kind of policies Carlson supports these days because I don’t watch Fox News, but if he takes this up on his show regularly, then God bless 'em.
Carlson is an awful human being. He’ll say anything to get paid. The GOP is fracturing, with the poor racists on one side and the rich ones on the other, and he’s betting that the audience share is with the poor ones.
Carlson is pushing populist bullshit, just like Trump. It’s just more of the same self victimization that drives anti immigration and racism and everything else, just wearing a different hat.
“Why aren’t things good for me? Because someone else is keeping me down and taking what is rightfully mine.”
It’s a very old pitch, sold by a lot of really bad guys who ended up killing a whole lot of people.
The responses in this thread are pretty funny.
Those are gold…one of my favorites: