R&I – FS
Sunday, 17 Jan 2021 8:21 AM
The Republican Party must repudiate the conspiracy theories like QAnon or “be consumed by them,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., warned in commentary urging the GOP to “rebuild itself” in the wake of the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol and troubled end to the Trump administration.
In a stern admonition to the party posted by The Atlantic, Sasse took on the radical thinking on both the right and left of politics and the media.
“The violence that Americans witnessed — and that might recur in the coming days — is not a protest gone awry or the work of ‘a few bad apples,’” he warned. “It is the blossoming of a rotten seed that took root in the Republican Party some time ago and has been nourished by treachery, poor political judgment, and cowardice.”
“When [President Donald] Trump leaves office, my party faces a choice: We can dedicate ourselves to defending the Constitution and perpetuating our best American institutions and traditions, or we can be a party of conspiracy theories, cable-news fantasies, and the ruin that comes with them.
“Until last week, many party leaders and consultants thought they could preach the Constitution while winking at QAnon. They can’t. The GOP must reject conspiracy theories or be consumed by them. Now is the time to decide what this party is about,” he wrote.
He also lashed out at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for not disavowing freshman Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s campaign, calling her “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”
“If the GOP is to have a future outside the fever dreams of internet trolls, we have to call out falsehoods and conspiracy theories unequivocally. We have to repudiate people who peddle those lies,” Sasse wrote.
Captain