Gosar Rebuked by House Colleagues - and Family

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Paul Gosar has been a Republican member of the Arizona delegation to the US House of Representatives since 2011.   Having served mored than a decade in Congress, Gosar should have a fairly good idea of the types of behaviors that the House will and will not tolerate, and he should have a basic understanding of how things work in Congress and the importance of civility and respect toward other members.

But Paul Gosar seems to take some strange pride in being mean-spirited and confrontational.

Gosar has been in the news this past week after he - or his staff - released an anime cartoon over Twitter that showed the Arizona congressman killing a fellow member of Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and posing a physical threat to President Biden.  Gosar blamed his staff for posting the tweet, but defended it saying that he was trying to engage with a younger demographic.

But what Paul Gosar tried to paint as amusing, others viewed as a threat or an incitement toward violence.  Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who has had threats made on her life before, was particularly not amused.

The House of Representatives had two options in dealing with the disturbing behavior of Rep. Gosar.  They could vote to censure him, a formal rebuke, and remove him from his committee assignments, a process that would take a majority vote - or they could vote to expel him from Congress, a maneuver that would require a two-thirds vote by the House.   Democrats hold only a bare majority in the House so Speaker Pelosi chose to go with the censure vote.

Pelosi defended the vote to censure by stating:

"These actions demand a response.  We cannot have members joking about murdering each other.  This is both an endangerment of our elected officials and an insult to the institution."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the injured party in this ugly affair, spoke in favor of the censure, and then she turned her fire on Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the GOP in the House.  AOC lambasted McCarthy by saying:

"It's a sad day in which a member who leads a political party cannot bring himself to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong.  What is so hard about saying that it is wrong?"

Paul Gosar's brother, Tim Gosar, described AOC's speech as "powerful, succinct, and spot-on."  He added that his brother, the Arizona congressman, is "dangerous" and "should be expelled."

The House voted 223-207 yesterday afternoon to censure Congressman Gosar.  All Democratic House members and two Republicans voted for the censure - and one Republican voted "present."  The remainder of the GOP members of the House voted against the censure of their controversial colleague.   Gosar is only the 24th person in history to be censured by the House, and the first in more than a decade.  He was also removed from his two committee assignments.  

Within minutes of the vote to censure, Congressman Gosar again posted the offensive cartoon tweet to Twitter.   Decency and civility be damned!