John Hanna / AP, file
Kansas Republican Party Chairman Mike Brown, right, watches and works on his cell phone from the floor of the Kansas House, March 15, 2023, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Two top Kansas Republican Party officials, including Brown, are facing calls to resign over a viral online video showing people at a fundraiser kicking and beating a mannequin with a mask of President Joe Biden, highlighting the GOP’s deep divisions and problems with suburban voters.
Wednesday, March 13, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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Last week, at a GOP event in Johnson County, Kan., Americans were invited to show their patriotism and love of country by punching, kicking or curb stomping an effigy of President Joe Biden. The disturbing opportunity marks the complete transformation of the Republican Party from a principled and respectable organization to a deranged mob of violent extremists.
Several Kansas Republicans, including former Kansas GOP chairman Mike Kuckelman, condemned the booth, with Kuckelman even calling for the resignation of those responsible. But current leaders in Kansas’ Republican Party largely responded by downplaying the booth’s significance and trying to rewrite history.
The strongest words Mike Brown, the current Kansas GOP chairman, could muster were to describe the brutalized Biden effigy as “unfortunate.”
Dakotah Parshall, the executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, said the incident demonstrated “poor judgment.”
And Maria Holiday, the Johnson County GOP chair, essentially tried to say the entire scandal was made up.
According to reporting by the Kansas City Star, in an email to her fellow Johnson County Republican Party board members, Holiday said that critical descriptions of guests being encouraged to punch, kick or strike the president with a baseball bat were “full of inaccuracies per usual.” She declined to respond when asked to clarify those inaccuracies and scrubbed video of the incident from the party’s social media pages.
Instead of strong words of condemnation, the best the GOP could offer was political double-speak that is shameful, morally indefensible and at this point, completely unsurprising.
It’s reminiscent of the horrifying spectacle of a MAGA convoy of trucks that tried to drive a Biden campaign bus off the road, risking the lives of all inside. The collective reaction from GOP leadership? A shrug. From Donald Trump? Even worse, he suggested that things like this just “happen.”
They don’t just happen. They are provoked by shameful MAGA politicians leaning into the language of violence against their fellow Americans. Trump’s brand of violence is a constant theme and it’s personal, right down to his calls for attacks against the press pool and anyone who might “throw a tomato” of criticism.
Sadly, it appears the MAGA-fied GOP is all in when it comes to hurting those who disagree with them.
After all, this is the same GOP that claimed that armed right-wing insurrectionists who broke through police barricades, smashed windows and hunted then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence through the halls of the U.S. Capitol were nothing more that “normal tourists” who were “largely peaceful.” In the House of Representatives, GOP leaders stonewalled Capitol police and showed almost no concern for the men and women who protected the Capitol that day. Several police officers died because of the murderous attack by Trump supporters.
The GOP decries nonviolent “cancel culture” on the left while celebrating Proud Boy thugs and MAGA troops who kill cops as “patriots.” Their leader, Trump, invited the insurrectionists to Washington, D.C., with the promise of a “wild” time and then refused to take any action to calm the situation as the violence unfolded.
This week, Trump vowed that, if elected president, he would pardon those convicted of heinous crimes against the nation on Jan. 6. The message is clear going forward if he wins again: If you engage in political violence on behalf of Trump, he will pardon you. More will die at MAGA hands because of this. Count on it.
Numerous reports after Trump’s second impeachment quoted more than a dozen unnamed Republican senators who said they would have voted to convict Trump, but they were too afraid for themselves and their families if they did. These are not profiles in courage and this is how a once-respectable party gets overwhelmed with thuggery.
At the state and local level, threats of political violence from the MAGA GOP majority are driving out dismayed and scared low-level Republican officials who remember a different party than the one that exists today.
Just a few months after the Jan. 6 attack, a man at a conservative political rally in Idaho publicly declared that he was ready to use his guns to kill Democrats. Trump’s MAGA extremists erupted in cheers.
In Michigan, a plot to kidnap, rape and murder Gov. Gretchen Witmer was foiled by law enforcement. This came after many of the same plotters — members of a far-right militia — showed up at the Michigan statehouse with assault rifles in an attempt to intimidate lawmakers.
In the ensuing years from Jan. 6 it has been MAGA extremists who have done everything from bashing Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband, Paul Pelosi, over the head with a hammer to threatening to “Kill judges. Behead judges. Roundhouse kick a judge into the concrete, slam dunk a judge’s baby into the trashcan.”
In response, conservative lawmakers from across the country treated the attack on Paul Pelosi as a joke for their amusement and at a Trump campaign rally in Iowa, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., declared that “only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C.”
An investigation by Reuters identified at least 39 people who have lost their lives to political violence since the Jan. 6 insurrection. Twenty-four of those died in mass killings that threaten anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, no matter what their political beliefs or ideology.
Violence is not a fringe part of the MAGA movement. Trump and his supporters within the GOP are not innocent bystanders, they are the cause and the instigators. Trump himself has suggested beating up people who espouse liberal ideals and shooting suspected migrants.
Those who ally themselves with the Republican Party can no longer claim that they are innocent. Actions speak louder than words and saying you condemn political violence is meaningless if you continue to vote for violent political leaders.
For all truly patriotic Republicans, the time has long past arrived to rise up and cast out the violent thugs in their midst. Or abandon the party and vote against all Republicans until the crazies are banished. Anything less constitutes a betrayal of America.
