It’s understandable that Republicans are looking for someone to blame for the current scarcity of infant formula in the United States. Some Republicans, on the other hand, are going about this in a quite unusual way.
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, for example, said Friday that Democrats have “no strategy” to deal with the issue. However, this was not entirely accurate: measures were presented last week by the White House and the Democratic leadership in the House. Even yet, according to the Washington Post, New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney didn’t stop there.
On Friday, Stefanik tweeted that Democrats and the “typical pedo grifters” are “out of touch” with the American people. She appeared to be referencing a weird and unfounded notion prevalent in some conservative circles. When it comes to right-wing conspiracy theories like QAnon, “pedos” (short for “paedophiles”) penetrate the ranks of government and are part of an elite cabal of paedophiles who rule the globe, the term “pedos” is used frequently.
After all, “Stefanik’s tweet is another evidence of how terminology slamming Democrats as ‘paedophiles’ has gone mainstream in the GOP,” according to the New York Post.
The congresswoman’s staff apparently informed a constituent in reaction to the uproar that Stefanik intended “pedo” to mean “children,” which is as absurd as it appears.
Soon after, Republican critics began to focus more intently on the leader’s public pronouncements. According to the Washington Post:
Members of the Republican Party, including New York Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-3), came under fire on Sunday for evoking the racist “great replacement” thesis, which may have served as inspiration for an 18-year-old Buffalo supermarket gunman accused of killing ten people of colour.
The “great replacement” conspiracy theory is a popular one on the right, but for the majority of Americans, it’s a little less well-known. Confederate forces, including Democrats, pro-immigration activists, and “globalists,” allegedly want to systematically replace white Americans with people of colour from other nations, as the conspiracy theory’s central premise holds.
Some extreme fanatics first found it appealing. Finally, the notion was accepted by several conservative journalists. Several Republican members of Congress, as well as certain polling data, indicate that over half of Republican voters support the concept, if not the term.
When a suspected gunman stormed into a Buffalo grocery store over the weekend, the “great replacement” conspiracy idea resurfaced. The hypothesis was constantly mentioned in the suspect’s internet “manifesto.”
For many, it brought back memories of Stefanik’s decision last autumn to run online commercials in which he claimed that President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats were attempting to foment a “permanent electoral rebellion” by broadening the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Advertisement: “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: an Electoral INSURRECTION… Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington,” reads the ad from Stefanik’s political operation.
The Times Union’s editorial board, which hails from the district in which the lawmaker was born and raised, was unimpressed. As the New York Times’ editorial board wrote in September, the vicious speech that Ms. Stefanik and far too many of her colleagues openly spew is what has to be replaced in this country and the Republican Party.
The New York Republican wasn’t always like this, as we explored later. It was just a few years ago that Stefanik fought against Donald Trump’s immigration policies. She was afraid that people would regard her as a Trump loyalist throughout her 2016 campaign, and thus she avoided even mentioning Trump’s name.
Voters were encouraged to consider her as one of the body’s “most nonpartisan” members, according to the representative.
As a result, Stefanik realised that she would have to lay her values aside and embrace political drivel in order to rise in the ranks of the Republican Party.
It wasn’t until after the riots of January 6th, 2020 that the young New Yorker took on a totally new character, going so far as to vote against certifying the presidential election results for 2020!
There’s no sign of Stefanik’s prior incarnation remaining in the game.
This morning, Stefanik (R-N.Y.) issued a statement stating she was “heartbroken and grieved” by the massacre in Buffalo. Congresswoman Stefanik has “never pushed for any racial stance or made a racist comment,” according to Alex DeGrasse, a senior aide.
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Shifts to the right catch up with the House GOP’s Elise Stefanik
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