Young Republican gala a stain on NY GOP

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has profaned a lot of public spaces with vile language and conspiracy theories in her brief career in the public eye. But the Georgia Republican’s comments this weekend at a New York Young Republican Club event in Manhattan featured a particularly jarring round of treasonous talk in an august setting.

About the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that disrupted the vote certification, Greene said, “if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won,” according to multiple news accounts.

"Not to mention,” she went on to say, to cheers, “it would’ve been armed.”

The suggestion that the problem with Jan. 6 was insufficiently aggressive tactics by the attackers is heinous.

And these were Greene’s words at the 110th annual gala of a group that, according to its website, formally incorporated in 1912 with the “express purpose” to “promote and maintain the principles of the Republican Party,” and “develop sound principle and public spirit in party politics.” Also, “to promote honest and fair electoral methods, to the end that the expression of the popular will by whatever party or body, shall be as free, untrammeled and equal as possible.”

What a difference a century makes.

Greene’s words were not the only facet of the evening that ran counter to the preceding noble sentiments. Also featured on the guest list, as previously reported by Newsday, were members of the Austrian Freedom Party founded by an SS officer after World War II, and the Freedom Youth of Austria party that seeks to “end illegal immigration that ‘eradicates’ the ‘traditional people of a land.’”

Beyond the Nazi and neo-Nazi traces were conspiracy mongers like Jack Posobiec, who pushed the disgusting pedophilia falsehood known as Pizzagate.

Taking it all in were Rudy Giuliani, who further discredits himself as an election denier, and one of Long Island’s own newly elected members of Congress, George Santos. This soup is not one he should be swimming in, though he was immersed throughout his successful campaign.

Greene’s were not the only violence-promoting pronouncements of the evening. The GOP group’s president, Gavin Wax, reportedly said “We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets.”

Back in 2018, a different New York-based Republican club event featured Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right Proud Boys, whose members reportedly went on to initiate brawling outside.

This is not the type of Republicanism at its best that New York is known for, the conservationist impulse of Teddy Roosevelt, the expansiveness of Nelson Rockefeller, the pragmatism of George Pataki, or the moderation of rank-and-file voters who want a good economy and strong society for all. It can’t be what the New York GOP becomes.