Five plank word salad
On President Biden’s first full day in office, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wasted no time filing articles of impeachment, claiming Biden is “unfit” for office because of his “lengthy and disturbing” abuse of power. Months later, Greene introduced a fresh set of resolutions to impeach Biden that were similarly on a fast track to nowhere.
Missouri Republican Rep. Billy Long, who is now running to represent his state in the Senate, just managed to outdo Greene in how off-the-rails his efforts to oust Biden can be. On Friday, Long unveiled his so-called “platform.” Far from a formal outline of serious policy positions and legislative goals, Long’s platform is nothing more than a hastily tweeted word salad with five planks.
The fourth and fifth planks are quick mentions of finishing the Keystone Pipeline and Trump’s wall, respectively, without any further explanation or commentary. However, Long’s first few planks are so bizarre that Greene’s feeble attempts to impeach Biden appear almost rational and studious, by comparison.
First, Long plans to simply get Vice President Kamala Harris to resign. Once that happens, Long will then ask Biden to appoint Donald Trump to take Harris’ place. Finally, Long will proceed to his third plank by getting Biden to resign the presidency. The supposedly realistic result is that Biden hands the reigns back to Trump, who can then continue destroying the country from the comfort of Executive Time.
More disturbing thank Long’s joke of a platform were his words uttered on a local radio station a couple days earlier when he insisted there’s a straight line to be drawn between legal abortion and mass shootings such as the recent one in Uvalde. Rather than acknowledge that guns are the issue, Long insisted that the problem stems from “when we decided it was OK to murder kids in their mothers’ wombs,” adding that “[l]ife has no value to a lot of these folks.”
In normal times, such nonsensical and offensive behavior would seem highly inappropriate for a sitting member of Congress running for Senate. But when it comes to today’s Republican Party, nearly everything is a cringeworthy race to the bottom. As the Democratic Party continues to stand tall for democracy, dignity, and progress, the GOP cravenly follows Greene, Long, and others as they light the way toward their party’s humiliating implosion.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month