I don’t want to spend much time dwelling on the hateful, absurd and awful things Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican newly elected to Congress, has said over the years.
It will suffice to say that Greene is a conspiracy theorist troubled enough to believe that space lasers financed by Jewish financiers set wildfires in California, to name just one of her bizarre claims.
I will never understand how Georgia voters sent Greene to Congress, but they did, and her election put a question before her colleagues: Should she be removed from House committee posts?
Elise Stefanik voted no.
To be sure, the North Country Republican, who lives in Schuylerville, made it known she does not support the "inexcusable statements" Greene has made. But Stefanik just couldn’t vote yes, she said, because she has too much respect for the will of voters.
"It is not the right of House Democrats to unilaterally overturn the people of Georgia’s decision," Stefanik said in a statement after her colleagues stripped Greene of committee assignments last week. Stefanik called the move "a partisan power grab."
I'm at a loss. I mean … I just … wow.
If Stefanik had been talking about the will of voters in Kansas or Alaska or New Mexico, maybe I wouldn’t be quite so flummoxed. But Georgia? Georgia!? GEORGIA??!!
Perhaps Stefanik is hoping we’ve already forgotten that just a month ago she and many other Republicans tried to reject election results from that very state as part of a partisan power grab to, you know, unilaterally overturn the people of Georgia’s decision.
Yet many of you will certainly remember that, in a speech delivered just hours after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Stefanik said changes ordered by the Georgia Secretary of State, a Republican, made the state's November election unconstitutional. Courts disagreed.
And perhaps you haven't forgotten that ahead of her vote to challenge presidential election results from four states, Stefanik also claimed, falsely, that more than 140,000 votes were cast by underage, deceased or otherwise unauthorized voters in just one Georgia county.
And you may remember that Stefanik also endorsed a lawsuit, filed by the attorney general in Texas, attempting to disqualify election results from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, again arguing that changes to election rules made without legislative approval were unconstitutional.
The lawsuit sought to overturn the presidential election, of course, and would have disenfranchised millions. It would have handed an election won by Joe Biden to Donald Trump. It was a cynical ploy that helped convince millions of Americans that a fair election had been stolen.
Now, though, Stefanik has such enormous respect for the will of voters and the sanctity of Georgia’s fine electoral process that she couldn’t possibly sanction Greene’s bigotry and lunacy.
Stefanik must think voters are stupid. How else does one explain such wild contradictions? As an editorial in the Post-Star put it, "Stefanik’s excuse for taking Greene’s side is so full of holes, it’s invisible."
Of course, removing Greene from committees is nothing like overturning an election. Greene was not going to be thrown out of Congress or replaced by a Democrat. Her votes would still count.
But Stefanik’s constitutional claims about the presidential election were also rubbish, given that officials in other states, including some won by Trump, also changed election procedures without legislative approval.
In Texas, for example, Gov. Greg Abbott issued orders that, among other changes, lengthened the early voting period and limited the number of drop-off locations for absentee ballots. By Stefanik's standard, Abbott’s moves were unconstitutional.
But she didn’t object to that election. Nor did she object to her own in New York’s 21st congressional district, though Gov. Andrew Cuomo also made unilateral changes to voting rules.
It's odd, isn’t it? Stefanik seems to believe an election is fair if the Republican wins and unfair if the Democrat succeeds. One choice represents the unmistakable, sacrosanct will of the voters, while the other should be overturned by the courts or rebuffed by Congress.
It’s a view that makes no logical sense, unless distorted by a hyper-partisan lens. The reality, though, is that Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, is too smart to be blind to the intellectual dishonesty at the heart of her arguments. She certainly sees the inconsistencies in her claims.
Stefanik must think, then, that we'll be too dumb to catch on — that a majority of voters will swallow whatever absurd excuse she chooses to spout. Either that, or she hopes we’re too apathetic to care.
cchurchill@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill
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