The vote by four Latino Republican lawmakers to deprive their GOP colleague of her committee posts for her proponent of QAnon falsehoods and conspiracy theories was, according to a former Latin Republican lawmaker, the ‘right decision’.
A Democratic analyst described it as ‘one sensible vote’, as most lawmakers backed then-President Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election by voting to challenge the election college votes confirming Joe Biden’s victory .
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York and Florida Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar were among only 11 Republicans who joined Democrats on Thursday against the votes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., A supporter of the QAnon conspiracy movement. The mood prevailed.
The vote on Greene and her comments follows the alarming growth of misinformation and disinformation among Latino voters; in Florida, it was noticeable in the Spanish-language social media and it tended to favor Trump. The disinformation gained ground when the pandemic began, with the rhetoric widely circulated on Facebook, WhatsApp groups and AM radio stations.
Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman in Florida and current NBC News and political analyst at MSNBC, said the vote by the three Republicans in Florida was not surprising “given the reckless and insensitive nature” of Greene’s statement that the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. in Parkland, Florida, was a farce.
Seventeen people were killed in the February 2018 shooting.
“This will give them a chance to claim that they are taking each vote separately and trying to make the best decision,” Curbelo said. He said some voters would be upset about how lawmakers voted, especially Republican primary voters. But in South Florida, he said, “In general, it would be much appreciated.”
But it is important that the Spanish Republicans “voted to condemn the spread of lies in essence,” Curbelo said. “I think if that’s why they voted the way they did, I think it’s the right decision.”
Fernand Amandi, a Democratic political consultant in Florida, said the Latino Republicans’ rejection of Greene and her regurgitation of QAnon conspiracy theories were the only “healthy vote” of the recent votes by lawmakers.
Everyone except Salazar voted last month to block the election results after the deadly attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. Salazar had not yet been sworn in when the votes took place.
None of the Republican lawmakers voted to accuse Trump on charges of inciting the riot.
“We’re trying to applaud this mood, but how can you reconcile it with their previous voices? The logic can only be described as schizophrenic,” Amandi said.
Voting to reject the election results and oppose Trump’s accusation “falls essentially in the same line of thinking of QAnon,” Amandi said.
For several of the Latin legislators, there was some qualification to remove Greene.
“I said earlier that MTG’s comments were unacceptable, and today I voted to remove her from her committee duties,” Diaz-Balart said in a tweet after the vote. He also said there were members who should be removed from their committee assignments “because of their irresponsible, inflammatory speech.”
Diaz-Balart mentions his name in a Twitter post Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn .; Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California; and Cynthia McKinney, a former Georgia Democrat who left office in 2007.
Like Diaz-Balart, Malliotakis and Salazar mentioned Omar in statements they tweeted, while Gimenez implicitly referred to her in his tweet.
The legislature’s elections were aided by false information in the 2020 campaign that portrayed all Democrats, including Biden, as socialists and that their policies brought about Cuba’s socialism and communism and Venezuela’s authoritarianism.
After Gimenez defeated Democratic Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, he declared in his victory speech that victory ” is a rejection of socialism and the evils of socialism and communism, and it is not just rhetoric. ”
Salazar, Gimenez and Malliotakis are all members of what they call the Freedom Force, which they first described as an anti-socialist group to oppose the group of Liberal Democrats led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., called The Squad. to work. .
Carlos Gutierrez, former Secretary of Commerce in the George W. Bush administration, said Republican GOP congressmen who voted to remove Greene from her committees helped themselves politically in the short term. He said they were able to cast the ballot, but not to accuse Trump and to vote against the election results “because it is the party today.”
He warned that the party is getting smaller as Republicans are shut down and become independent, as the party accepts the rhetoric of Trump, QAnon and his acolytes like Greene.
“The more that happens, the more people will continue to leave the party,” Gutierrez said. “They were all very much in line with Trump, and I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to get rid of Trump without losing support.”
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