Mona Charen: McConnell condemns QAnon, except when he doesn’t

So now Mitch McConnell tells us that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s views are a “cancer” on the Republican Party and on the country. Odd that he neglected to make that point when one of his preferred candidates in the Georgia runoff, Kelly Loeffler, campaigned with Greene.

The party’s dilemma, we’re told, is captured by two members of Congress. On the one hand, you have Liz Cheney, three term, at-large representative from Wyoming and the third-ranking Republican in the House. A former deputy assistant secretary of state, she is known for her interest in national security, child protection and, until the attack on the Capitol, reliable support for Donald Trump.

Cheney is getting blowback within the party because she voted to impeach Trump after the attack on Congress. The Wyoming GOP put out a statement calling Cheney’s vote to hold Trump accountable for the worst sedition in 160 years a “travesty.” The execrable Matt Gaetz flew from his home district in the Florida panhandle to Cheyenne to hold a rally against her, which featured a phone-in from Donald Trump Jr. At least 107 House Republicans had indicated they would vote to oust Cheney from her leadership role in a secret ballot. A Wall Street Journal editorial characterized this as a “few dozen backbenchers,” but it’s actually an outright majority of the caucus. (In the end, on Wednesday night, House Republicans voted 145 to 61 for Cheney retain her role.)

And then, on the other hand, we have Greene, representative of all that is insane in America. She believes that the Parkland shootings were staged, that QAnon is right about the pedophilic cannibals populating the Democratic Party, that Nancy Pelosi should be murdered, that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that Jewish space lasers caused the California wildfires last year. (You don’t think fires start themselves, do you?) Her Republican primary opponent, Dr. John Cowan, described her this way: “I’m a neurosurgeon. I diagnose crazy every day. It took five minutes talking to her to realize there were bats in the attic.”

Weighing Cheney against Greene, the Republican Party dithered. After House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to strip Greene of her committee assignments, the Democrats on Thursday voted to do so (with 11 Republicans joining in).

Earlier in the week, defending Greene, Andy Biggs of the ironically named “Freedom Caucus” fumed: “The Democrats’ moves to strip Congresswoman Greene of her committee assignments for thoughts and opinions she shared as a private citizen before coming to the U.S. House is unprecedented and unconstitutional. … Republicans, beware: If this can happen to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, it can happen to any one of us.”

Well, there you have it — the perfect path to discrediting all Republicans. Biggs, Gaetz, Jim Jordan and others are throwing their arms around Greene and confirming that her crazed rantings are indistinguishable from other Republicans. Fox host Tucker Carlson made a similar case recently when he mocked those who warn of Greene’s vicious, contemptible conspiracy-mongering.

Look, it’s great that a number of Senate Republicans are speaking forcefully about quarantining QAnonism. Todd Young was refreshingly frank: “The people of her congressional district, it’s their prerogative if they want to abase themselves by voting to elect someone who indulges in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and all manner of other nonsense. But I’ve got no tolerance for people like that. In terms of the divisions within our party, she’s not even part of the conversation, as far as I’m concerned.”

But these senators might want to consider the elephant in the room. Who phoned Greene to express support after her “Rothschild space laser” comments became public? Who called her a “rising star” of the GOP? Who said QAnon people “love their country”? And who is it that all of the aforementioned senators seem poised to acquit again?

Greene is the easy target for these newly fastidious Republicans. They opened the tent long ago to the villains, liars and conspiracists when they welcomed the ringmaster. With one side of their mouths, they denounce the looney haters, but with the other, they seize a fig leaf to disguise their fear of convicting Trump.

If they want to cleanse the Republican Party of the poisons that are rapidly killing it, they can vote to hold the man who first infected it with QAnon, “election fraud” and much more, accountable. That, not restraining Greene, is the lustration the party needs.

Mona Charen is policy editor of TheBulwark.com. A syndicated columnist since 1987, she has worked in the White House under President Reagan and at National Review. Her books include “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Harm Those They Claim to Help — and the Rest of Us.”

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Mona Charen Columns | Opinion

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