The vote by four Latin Republican members of Congress to remove their Republican colleague from their committee for their adoption of QAnon’s falsehoods and conspiracy theories was the “right decision”, according to a former Latin Republican legislator.
A Democratic analyst described it as “a sensible vote”, as most lawmakers had supported then President Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election, voting to challenge the electoral college votes that testified to Joe Biden’s victory.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York and Florida Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar were among only 11 Republicans who joined Democrats on Thursday in the vote against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., A supporter of the QAnon conspiracy movement. The vote prevailed.
The vote on Greene and his comments follows the alarming growth of disinformation and disinformation among Latin voters; in Florida, he was notable on social media in Spanish and tended to favor Trump. Disinformation gained ground when the pandemic began, with rhetoric circulating widely on Facebook, WhatsApp groups and AM radios.
Carlos Curbelo, a former Florida Republican congressman and current political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, said the vote by the three Florida Republicans 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, it was a scam.
Seventeen people were killed in the February 2018 shooting.
“This will give them a chance to argue that they are voting individually and trying to reach the best decision,” said Curbelo. He said some voters will be upset about how lawmakers voted, especially Republican voters in the primaries. But in South Florida, he said, “generally speaking, it will be very much appreciated.”
But most importantly, Hispanic Republicans “voted essentially to condemn the proliferation of lies,” said Curbelo. “I think if that’s why they voted the way they did, I think it’s the right decision.”
Fernand Amandi, a Democratic political adviser from Florida, said that the Latin Republicans’ rejection of Greene and his regurgitation of QAnon’s conspiracy theories was the only “logical vote” in the recent votes of lawmakers.
Everyone except Salazar voted last month to overturn the election results following the deadly attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. Salazar had not yet been installed when the votes took place.
None of the Republican lawmakers voted to impeach Trump on the charge that he incited the riot.
“We are trying to applaud this vote, but how can you reconcile it with previous votes? The line of logic can only be described as schizophrenic,” said Amandi.
Voting to reject election results and against Trump’s impeachment “in essence fits the same line of thought as QAnon,” said Amandi.
For several of the Latin lawmakers, the votes to remove Greene came with some caveat.
“I have previously stated that MTG comments are unacceptable and today I voted to remove it from its committee assignments,” said Diaz-Balart in a tweet after the vote. He also said that there were members who should be removed from their duties on the committee “for their irresponsible and fiery speech”.
Diaz-Balart went on to quote on a Twitter topic Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif .; and Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic representative from Georgia who stepped down in 2007.
Like Diaz-Balart, Malliotakis and Salazar called Omar in statements they tweeted, while Gimenez made an implicit reference to her in her tweet.
The legislators’ elections were aided by false information in the 2020 campaign, which portrayed all Democrats, including Biden, as socialists and their policies generating Cuban socialism and communism and Venezuela’s authoritarianism.
After defeating Democratic MP Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Gimenez declared in his victory speech that the victory was “a rejection of socialism and the evils of socialism and communism, and this is not just rhetoric”.
Salazar, Gimenez and Malliotakis are all members of what they call the Freedom Force, which they first classified as an anti-socialism group to oppose the group of liberal Democrats led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y. The Squad.
Carlos Gutierrez, former Commerce Secretary of the George W. Bush administration, said that Republican Republican MPs who voted to remove Greene from their committees helped each other politically in the short term. He said they were able to vote, but not vote for Trump’s impeachment and vote against the election results “because that is the party today.”
He warned that the party is becoming smaller as Republicans move away and become independent, as the party accepts the rhetoric of Trump, QAnon and his acolytes as Greene.
“The more that happens, the more people will continue to leave the party,” said Gutierrez. “They were all very aligned with Trump and I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how they can part with Trump without losing support.”
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