Mitch McConnell and Marjorie Taylor-Greene

Dear Commons Community.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell denounced newly elected Representative  Marjorie Taylor-Greene yesterday, calling the far-right Georgia Republican’s embrace of conspiracy theories and “loony lies” a “cancer for the Republican Party.”

“Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country,” McConnell said in a statement. “Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”  As reported by The Hill and CNN:

While McConnell did not name Greene directly, his statement stands as a scathing rebuke of the freshman Republican House member.  

Greene quickly shot back on Twitter, asserting that “the real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully. This is why we are losing our country.”

Greene has faced backlash since a CNN report last week found that she had repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress. Amid an uproar over her past comments, video of Greene confronting Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg before she was elected went viral.

The freshman congresswoman has a track record of incendiary rhetoric, including past comments using Islamophobic and anti-Semitic tropes, as well as ties to the baseless and thoroughly debunked QAnon conspiracy theory.

Greene now faces potentially serious consequences in light of her prior comments, with House Democrats moving expeditiously to remove her from her committee assignments.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, is planning to deliver an ultimatum on Greene to House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California this week, a source familiar tells CNN. Hoyer is expected to tell McCarthy that Republicans have 72 hours to strip Greene of her committee assignments or Democrats will bring the issue to the House floor.

CNN previously reported that McCarthy is slated to meet with Greene this week, as many House Republicans have been silent about her newly resurfaced incendiary comments.

McConnell’s short but pointed rebuke last night came the same day the Kentucky Republican waded publicly into another controversy threatening party unity. In a separate statement to CNN, he expressed support for Republican Rep. Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach President Donald Trump as some Trump loyalists seek to remove her from leadership.

In the cases of Cheney and Greene, the Senate minority leader appears to break with the former President. Greene announced Saturday that she had spoken with Trump amid calls for her expulsion from Congress, saying she was grateful for his support and will “never apologize” as she faces backlash.

Greene, Trump and their followers are indeed the cancers for the Republican Party and American society in general.  McConnell and Republican leaders need to speak out more against them.

Tony

NOTE:  After I  made the posting above, Michelle Goldberg had a column entitled, It’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Party Now, commenting that Taylor-Greene and her supporters are emerging as the real leaders of the Republican Party.

Dear Commons Community,

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Sunday announced a new “movement” to push back on the Republican Party’s embrace of former President Donald Trump and retire the “poisonous conspiracies and lies” that defined his administration.

In a six-minute campaign-style video (above) posted to the new “Country First” website, which is funded by Kinzinger’s Future First Leadership Political Action Committee, the Illinois Republican asserts: “The Republican Party has lost its way. If we are to lead again, we need to muster the courage to remember who we are.”

“We need to remember what we believe and why we believe it,” he continued. “Looking in the mirror can be hard, but the time has come to choose what kind of party we will be, and what kind of future we’ll fight to bring about.”

The effort from Kinzinger marks a notable escalation in his struggle to set a new course for the GOP after four years of the Trump administration. He was one of 10 Republicans who joined all House Democrats in voting to impeach Trump

“I did it knowing full well it could very well be terminal to my career,” Kinzinger said of his vote during an interview with CNN’s David Axelrod on “The Axe Files” podcast. “But I also knew that I couldn’t live with myself having, you know, try to just protect it and just felt like the one time I was called to do a really tough duty, I didn’t do it.”

Concerns over his future within the party aren’t without merit. Several House Republicans have hammered Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the party’s third-ranking House leader, calling for her to step down from her leadership position over her vote to impeach Trump. She’s also facing a primary challenge from a prominent conservative state legislator.

But turning to the insurrection in his video yesterday, Kinzinger said he “wasn’t surprised, because I’d been watching the rhetoric leading up to that day and took it seriously.”

“It was a sort of thing that happens in a failed nation or a banana republic — not the greatest nation the world has ever known, but it did happen right here.”

At the end of his video message, Kinzinger asks Republicans to help him “take back our party” and “build up our country.”

“It’ll mean we have to do some difficult things, but after all, history is highlighted by times like these, and we have yet to fail. We won’t fail now. So let’s do this together.”

The Republican Party needs more Kinzingers!

Tony

Sonny Fox on Wonderama

Dear Commons Community,

As a child growing up in the 1950s, I used to watch “Wonderama” on Sunday mornings.  It was first hosted by Sandy Becker  and afterwards by Sonny Fox,  a native New Yorker and World War II veteran who died last week of Covid pneumonia. As his obituary in the New York Times mentions: “Fox was not a comic or a clown, just a smart and genial TV host who for almost a decade spoke to children, not at them.” 

“Mr. Fox was a veteran of television when he was hired for “Wonderama” by the New York station WNEW-TV (now WNYW). He had hosted a live local educational program in St. Louis and “Let’s Take a Trip,” on CBS, on which he took two youngsters on a field trip each week.

In 1956, CBS named Mr. Fox the M.C. of “The $64,000 Challenge,” but he was fired a few months after accidentally giving a contestant an answer. He was not embroiled in the scandal that emerged two years later when it was discovered that several quiz shows, including “Challenge,” had been rigged by their producers.

No such problems existed at “Wonderama,” where Mr. Fox’s mission was to tack away from the silly show it had become under previous hosts. But he was too serious at first, focusing on subjects like space exploration. Ratings began to fall.

“I became so ponderously educational that the kids who had been watching turtle races” — under the previous hosts — “had no idea what I was doing,” he said in a Television Academy interview in 2008.

The show, which was taped before an audience of about 50 youngsters, soon found its footing. It became a dazzling mixture of cartoons, spelling bees, games like “Simon Says,” joke-telling (by the children), contests, dramatizations of Shakespeare plays and magic. In 1964, the show held a mock Republican convention. Mr. Fox also interviewed newsmakers like Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and opened the floor to questions from the children.

“Do you think all the money that we’ve been spending on this nation’s space program should be spent on this or on poverty bills and such?” an earnest boy with glasses asked Senator Kennedy in 1965.

“We can make the space effort,” Mr. Kennedy said, adding that both could be done: “If there’s ever an unknown, man will search the unknown.”

Mr. Fox was not a comic performer like Chuck McCann, Sandy Becker or Soupy Sales — stars of their own daytime children’s shows on WNEW at the time — and did not wear funny costumes. He was a smart and genial host who wore a suit and tie.

He viewed the children in the studio not as passive observers of “Wonderama” but as integral to it, whether they were trying to stump him with a riddle or delivering news segments.”

I enjoyed Mr. Fox and Wonderama. 

May he rest in peace!

Tony

Republican Senators Offering New COVID-19 Relief Package

Dear Commons Community,

In the first sign of bipartisanship in a long time,  President Joe Biden will meet with a group of 10 Republican senators today to hear their proposal for a COVID-19 relief package that could be a significantly smaller, but bipartisan effort to support Americans during the ongoing pandemic.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said late yesterday that Biden had invited Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and her colleagues “for a full exchange of views” after the lawmakers sent a letter to Biden outlining a rebuttal to his $1.9 trillion proposal for additional relief.

Biden’s plan includes $1,400 relief checks for many Americans and a large expansion of unemployment benefits. In their letter, the Republicans countered with a package that would be 70% smaller ― although they said it could quickly pass through Congress. The plan includes $1,000 checks for most Americans and additional funds for vaccines and testing.

“In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a COVID-19 relief framework that builds on prior COVID assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support,” the group, which includes Sens. Collins, Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Mitt Romney (Utah). “Our proposal reflects many of your stated priorities, and with your support, we believe that this plan could be approved quickly by Congress with bipartisan support.”

Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Todd Young of Indiana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Thom Tillis of North Carolina also signed the letter.

Collins quickly thanked Biden for his response and said she looked forward to discussing the “path forward”.

Psaki suggested that the White House would continue to push for a large relief package, saying renewed support was “badly needed” by small businesses and families across the nation.

“With the virus posing a grave threat to the country, and economic conditions grim for so many, the need for action is urgent, and the scale of what must be done is large,” Psaki said in a statement. “As leading economists have said, the danger now is not in doing too much: it is in doing too little. Americans of both parties are looking to their leaders to meet the moment.”

A sign of hope that our political parties can work together!

Tony