The move is a response to the body’s vote this week to remove Confederate statues.
A group of Republican House members, led by Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas, introduced a resolution Thursday that would effectively ban the Democratic Party from the House or force a party name change over past slavery ties.
The move comes as a response to the recent efforts to remove tributes to past members of the Confederacy from the halls of Congress.
It specifically cites the Democratic Party platform’s support for slavery between 1840 and 1856, and other racist actions by party members through the early-to-mid 1900s
By introducing the legislation, the GOP lawmaker was hoping to make the point that “cancel culture” works both ways. Many progressives in recent weeks have voiced support for renaming or rebranding organizations and products deemed offensive.
For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) decided last month to remove portraits at the Capitol of four past House speakers who served as Confederate leaders — all four were Democrats.
Politico called Pelosi’s move “a symbolic step to rid the U.S. Capitol of pro-slavery relics amid a nationwide reckoning over race.” Gohmert picked things up from there:
The bill called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to “remove any items that names, symbolizes or mentions any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy” from the House and its properties. The resolution also says such a party “shall either change its name or be barred from participation in the House of Representatives.”
“Whereas on June 18, 2020, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the removal from the Capitol portraits of four previous Speakers of the House who served in the Confederacy saying that these portraits ‘set back our nation’s work to confront and combat bigotry,'” Gohmert said during a speech on the House floor. “The men depicted in the portraits were Democrat Robert M.T. Hunter, Democrat Howell Cobb, Democrat James L. Orr, and Democrat Charles F. Crisp.”
“Resolved, that the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall remove any item that named symbolizes or mentions any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy, from any area within the House wing of the Capitol or any House office building, and shall donate such item or symbol to the Library of Congress,” Gohmert said.
“And two, that any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery of the Confederacy shall either change its name or be barred from participation in the House of Representatives,” the congressman concluded. “With that, I would yield back.”
Gohmert, in a statement accompanying the bill, told Democrats they should rebrand themselves to “avoid triggering” anyone.
“As outlined in the resolution, a great portion of the history of the Democratic Party is filled with racism and hatred,” Gohmert said. “Since people are demanding we rid ourselves of the entities, symbols, and reminders of the repugnant aspects of our past, then the time has come for Democrats to acknowledge their party’s loathsome and bigoted past, and consider changing their party name to something that isn’t so blatantly and offensively tied to slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, and the Ku Klux Klan.”
He added: “To avoid triggering innocent bystanders by the racist past of the Democratic Party, I would suggest they change their name. That is the standard to which they are holding everyone else, so the name change needs to occur.”
The resolution’s co-sponsors are Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Jody Hice, R-Ga., Randy Weber, R-Texas, and Andy Harris, R-Md. It is unlikely to pass, but appears to be meant more as a criticism of allegedly “blatant hypocrisy” around the House’s approval of a measure removing Confederate busts in the Capitol this week.
Weber, speaking on the House floor after Gohmert introduced his resolution, criticized the rampant “cancel culture.”
“The cancel culture train, H.R. 7573, that passed yesterday, was wrong on a deep level. I’m not going to get on that cancel culture train that says we have to do away with any mention or remembrance of everybody or everything that we don’t agree with, or that might have said something we don’t like, didn’t like, or that might have stood for something that we don’t stand for,” Weber said.
(Fox News).
