Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) defended far-left Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) late last week against a push to remove her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee over her history of anti-Semitism.
Buck’s support for Omar put Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s desire to remove her from the Committee in danger of failing after two other Republicans have already signaled opposition to it.
“I think that we should not engage in this tit-for-tat,” Buck said during an interview.
“I have a little bit less certainty about Congressman Schiff and Swalwell on Intelligence just because it’s a little bit different than a regular committee,” he added. “But I’m going to think through that and make a decision.”
Axios noted that his office says that he “wouldn’t support the removal of Rep. Omar” from the Committee.
One of Omar’s biggest defenders has been Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who claimed that it was a First Amendment issue.
“We don’t have to agree with everything that members say,” Mace told Fox News. “I think we have to be very careful about what we are as a constitutional republic.”
“I am not a fan of Ilhan Omar. She’s an anti-Semite. She’s a bigot. She’s a racist. She’s a socialist,” Mace continued. “But that doesn’t mean that we cancel people in this country. Republicans don’t stand for cancel culture. And that’s essentially what this is.”
Mace claimed that booting Omar off the House Foreign Affairs Committee “sets a dangerous precedent,” even though Democrats previously booted Republican members off committees over controversial remarks that they have made.
“There’s so much anti-Semitism in this country. We should be condemning it right and left as we always have, but there’s also the First Amendment right to do that,” she said. “We’re all talking about the Twitter files and conservatives being censored, you know, it’s, it’s, it seems pretty hypocritical if you ask me.”
Omar claimed in response that the effort to remove her from the committee was “a blow to the integrity of our democratic institutions, and a threat to our national security.”
Mace was the first to jump to Omar’s defense, claiming a few weeks ago that it was about principle.
“I’m not going to support it,” Mace said. “I try to be consistent in my values … regardless of who’s in charge.”
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) signaled this week that she does not support removing Omar from Foreign Affairs.
“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Spartz wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented actions last Congress to remove Reps. Greene and Gosar from their committees without proper due process. Speaker McCarthy is taking unprecedented actions this Congress to deny some committee assignments to the Minority without proper due process again.”
“As I spoke against it on the House floor two years ago, I will not support this charade again,” she claimed. “Speaker McCarthy needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress and start governing for a change.”