Today is Tuesday, January 17, 2023. Today I learned that election denialism on the part of failed GOP candidates took a far deadlier turn when a former Republican candidate for the state legislature in New Mexico was arrested as the alleged ringleader of a criminal conspiracy to shoot at the homes of several elected Democrats, which was driven by election denialism. Luckily, no one was mortally wounded during the fusillade of bullets that tore through these officials’ homes. This scary story was covered in an opinion piece by Jill Filipovic for CNN on my smartphone entitled “Opinion: GOP candidate who allegedly shot at New Mexico Democrats’ homes can’t be written off as an aberration.”

The NewYork-based journalist believes that the repugnican party is now on the threshold of becoming the “party of criminality and chaos,” when at one time, it billed itself as the party of law and order. To illustrate this seismic change, consider the case of Solomon Pena, who is the failed GOP candidate who was arrested for spearheading this plot to shoot at Democrats’ homes. The mayor of Albuquerque said an investigation confirmed “these shootings were politically motivated.”

According to the allegations, Pena and four men he contacted fired shots at the homes of four Democrats, two county commissioners, and two state legislators. One of them, Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa, said she narrowly missed being in the house when bullets tore through it. In a statement, the elected Democrat said, “It was terrifying.” She added, “My house had four shots through the front door and windows, where just hours before my grand-baby and I were playing in the living room.”

Even though no one was shot and wounded in any of these assaults, it could have easily not been the case if any of the people were in the line of fire. Thus Filipovic strongly believes, as well as I do and many other critics of this Grand Old Party “No More,” that this incident is not representative of an aberration. That Pena represents exactly the kind of crazy who is now being embraced by this party; look at the continuing saga of George Santos, the existence of a Marjorie Taylor Green, a Lauren Boebert, a Paul Gosar, a Matt Gaetz, and so on. This party embraces a broader pattern of right-wing violence, fueled by the rhetoric coming from Republicans who hold some of the most powerful positions in the country.

Filipovic has this to say about the ridiculous “Stop the Steal” movement fomented by a former president: “The ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, which culminated in mobs breaking into the Capitol building intending to overturn the results of a free and fair election, left multiple people dead, and should go down in history as one of the greatest stains on American democracy since our founding.” This is just one of many examples. There is the run-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol when a group of far-right militia members engaged in a conspiracy to kidnap and possibly murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the state government. Those men were convicted, thankfully. And hundreds of January 6 rioters have been arrested and charged as well; some are even going to prison.

However, a majority of Republicans who hold significant power in the halls of Congress continue to believe Dumpf’s bullshit about the election almost three years ago. They continue to believe this canard because it’s what their alleged leaders are telling them. This is then an inherently dangerous situation, one that carries with it the risk of violence.

Right-wing terrorism has long been a more widespread problem than left-wing terrorism or Islamic terrorism, and according to the American Anti-Defamation League (ADL), most right-wing terrorism comes from antigovernment extremists, who often self-identify as “patriots,” or white supremacists; rounding out the right-wing terrorist triad are antiabortion and Christian extremists. Instead of soundly rejecting these forces, today’s Republican Party offers these entities a place at the table, signaling their complete embrace of their rhetoric and ideas.

Filipovic points out the complicity of several prominent repugnicans, not just Dumpf himself who invented the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy and then promulgated it among the rank and file of the repugnican party, including the abominable Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona who can easily compete against each other for being the worst type of representatives in Congress. Gosar has repeatedly aligned himself with the far-right fringe, posting a violent video of himself, attacking President Joe Biden and appearing to kill Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. His ties to white supremacist and white nationalist figures and groups go back years and years. How shameful and pathetic! These two crazies have been among the loudest election deniers and “Stop the Steal” proponents in the GOP. We should be very concerned about this.

In furtherance of this extreme agenda on the part of the repugnican party, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has even given these two nuts plum committee posts today. Green has been given a seat on the House Homeland Security Committee, which has jurisdiction over the border. Gosar, whose own siblings have severed ties to him for years, was given a seat on the House Committee on Natural Resources. In my opinion, it’s a situation where the patients of an insane asylum are now taking over the institution!

It’s McCarthy who is the real villain here, who has been unwilling to penalize members of his party for their egregious behavior and who has gone out of his way to support election deniers and undermine efforts to restore American democratic norms. He was one of the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Therefore, the violence exhibited today marks the Republican Party as a party that condones violence among its more extreme members and must own to it. And this party needs to solve its issues with violence – or we’re going to see even more brutality and bloodshed. The next attempted murder plot will succeed this time in which someone’s life will be taken all for a lie. And we can thank Donald Dumpf and his minions for it.

Talking about the patients in an insane asylum taking over the institution, I give you another example of this party’s extremism: Congress’s most-talked Representative, the con man George Santos, has been given two committee assignments by his mentor McCarthy who is rewarding the fraudster for voting for him as speaker in 15 bouts on the mat. This is outrageous, especially when voices are calling for the young trickster to resign altogether from Congress. Today the House GOP Steering Committee recommended Santos to sit on the House Small Business Committee and House Science, Space and Technology Committee, according to sources familiar with the assignments. These plum assignments for the new representative are not cemented in stone yet; the assignments will have to be approved by the full House Republican Conference. But how many of you would raise your hand to signal that Santos will not receive those assignments anyway? I doubt that these committee assignments will be rejected on Santos’s part since the party is clearly operating without any guiding ethics.

Stay safe and be well.