Everyone's against bigotry, right? Not 23 House Republicans, apparently

Twenty-three Republicans voted against a House resolution condemning “antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism and other forms of bigotry” that was passed by 407 of their colleagues of both political parties.

But few expect the US political and news media apparatus to shift into outrage mode over the refusal of so many Republican lawmakers to publicly disavow something so abhorrent as plain, old-fashioned bigotry and racism.

Republicans who voted against the resolution have been busy justifying their vote on Friday, with some placing their stand against anti-racism in the context of seeking to focus on condemning Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s criticism of the pro-Israel lobby, which has been labeled by some as antisemitic.

The House Republican conference chair, Liz Cheney, called the vote “a sham put forward by Democrats to avoid condemning one of their own and denouncing vile antisemitism.”

Other dissident Republicans also took umbrage with the resolution not mentioning Omar by name.

But some had different ideas, portraying their refusal to condemn bigotry as a defense of white people. Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama released a statement in which he said he could not sign on to a vote that did not include discrimination against Caucasians and Christians.

“The failure to specifically state opposition to discrimination against Caucasian-Americans and Christians, while reflective of Socialist Democrat priorities and values, is, by omission, fatal to the bill,” he said.

Others, like the New York congressman Peter King, had even less inclusive ideas about what the anti-bigotry measure should have mentioned: namely, cops.

Nowhere in any of their statements were any mention of the long history of bigotry and antisemitism from Republicans, or, indeed the Islamophobia and racism some see lying at the heart of the entire Omar ordeal.

The Iowa Republican Steve King, who among many other things in a prolific history of racist statements, lamented back in January that “white nationalist” had become a pejorative, simply voted “present”. King was stripped of his House committee seats that month after Republicans looked the other way at his behavior for years.

Congressman Matt Gaetz used his time during debate on the issue of bigotry to defend Donald Trump against allegations of Russian collusion. Not mentioned was his recently hosting a Holocaust denier and infamous alt-right troll at the State of the Union address as a personal guest.

“It is an insult to the memories of those killed in the Holocaust, to their families, and to the Jewish community to bring to the State of the Union as your guest a Holocaust denier,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote in a letter to Gaetz at the time.

Nor did any Republicans bring up the president’s own history of racist and antisemitic statements, like saying there were “very fine people on both sides” after a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, or his lengthy record of trafficking in Jewish stereotypes and frequent use of dehumanizing references to immigrants coming to “infest” the country.

In short the Republican backlash to something seemingly so anodyne and harmless as an anti-bigotry resolution revealed to many critics what some Republicans were actually after: punishing Omar specifically, not simply because of what she said, but because of her ethnic and religious identity while saying it.

But Omar actually voted for the resolution condemning antisemitism and other forms of bigotry, unlike her 23 Republican detractors. Something that may have turned the whole affair from a Democratic crisis into a Republican backfire.