When Will Republicans Start Physically Beating Up Women Colleagues?

The story about how a pro-slave fanatic, Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC) brutally beat an abolitionist, Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA), unconscious on the floor with a cane on the Senate floor in 1856, is well known by anyone who has studied the lead up to the Civil War. Less well known is that by 1858 "partisan tensions over slavery erupted into a 'full-fledged sectional combat on the floor.' This was one year after the U.S. Supreme Court enraged abolitionists by ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford that black people couldn’t be citizens and the federal government couldn’t ban slavery in western territories. The brawl started around 2:00 a.m. during an overnight session when a southern representative grabbed a northern representative by the throat and said he would teach the 'black republican puppy' a lesson. As the two white men struggled, their colleagues ran over and a fistfight broke out. The end result was a free fight in the open space in front of the Speaker’s platform featuring roughly thirty sweaty, disheveled, mostly middle-aged congressmen in a no-holds-barred brawl, North against South... Acts of violence like this showed how intensely southern congressmen wanted to preserve the economic, political and social power that they and their constituents held through owning slaves. They also presaged the larger fight between North and South that broke out three years later, when southern states seceded and declared war on the Union. After all, civil wars don’t just come out of nowhere."

No, they don't, do they? And yesterday it was cowardly southern dogs, doing what they do best: threatening women colleagues. First it was a concerted attack, led by pig-person Matt Gaetz of the Florida panhandle, demanding that Liz Cheney step down as Republican House Conference chair-- the only woman in the Republican leadership-- for not supporting Trump enough. The whole neo-fascist wing of the House GOP piled on, from Gym Jordan to Louie Gohmert-- and all the scarping from the bottom of the sewer system between. Apparently the anti-mask contingent were all in a huff because Cheney is pro-mask. Jordan and Andy Biggs screeching about her being pro-Fauci and Biggs "accused Cheney of undermining the GOP’s ability to win back the House and said that if someone has a problem with Trump, they should keep it to themselves."

The way the beat down started was weird. Gaetz was bitching about how Cheney supported Thomas Massie's primary opponent before he complained she was supportive of Trump. The problem there is that the person leading the charge against Massie was... Señor Trumpanzee himself. Aside from Jordan, a Confederate at hearts, only southern males attacked her: Gohmert (TX), Chip Roy (TX)-- who is about to be beaten by a woman for his seat and is flipping out-- Ralph Norman (SC)...




Meanwhile two more Southern gentlemen of the radical right, very much like Preston Brooks-- neo-fascist Ted Yoho of Florida and crooked used car salesman Roger Williams of Texas-- accosted AOC and started hurling expletives at her. Neither took a crap in their hands to throw it at her because there were witnesses around. Yoho was heard by a reporter called her a "fucking bitch," Williams chimed in and then when the news broke, they both denied it and called her a liar, refusing to address the problem of the witnesses, let alone apologizing. (This morning, Yoho made a disingenuous non-apology ("I cannot apologize for my passion... the offensive name-calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleagues and if they were construed that way...") apology on the House floor. Williams is still claiming nothing happened.)