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Friday, March 29, 2024

Toeing the line

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United States President Donald Trump amazingly cobbled together a spin to that congressional resolution condemning his racist tweets against four democratic lawmakers.

Toeing the line

“So great to see how unified the Republican Party was,” he said. “The Republican vote was 187-4. Wow!” he said in yet another tweet Wednesday.

More than the 187 Republicans who voted not to condemn Trump’s words, 240 members of Congress, including four Republicans and one independent, voted to do so.

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The objectionable tweet, posted Sunday, said:

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly. and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….”

The words were so incendiary that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi uttered some choice words for the president before the voting. She was subsequently barred from speaking further.

Pelosi, however, told reporters she had “absolutely” no regrets for her language describing the resolution, and that she was proud of the attention has been called to it because what the President said was completely inappropriate against our colleagues but not just against them but against so many people in our country and he said to them “go back to where you came from.”

The arguments on whether or not the statements were indeed racist, and why it is a tragedy to even have a chief executive thinking and speaking this way, are many. But there is talk that more than four Republicans would have voted for the condemnation—and according to their conscience—had they not been toeing the party line.

Members of Congress, after all, belong to an entirely separate and co-equal branch of government. In a perfect world, they are imbued with the duty to call out the excesses and the inadequacies of the other branches, this time, the Executive.

In the real, practical world, of course, they have to be mindful of what they do with respect to their political affiliations. That’s not so strange a concept, whether you’re talking about the US or other countries, like the Philippines.

When public officials place their personal and political agenda over their real duty of representing their constituent’s interest and doing their jobs according to the dictates of their conscience, that is not unity. That is blind submission. Acquiescence. A violation of the people’s trust.

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