A Montana Republican demonstrated a frightening ignorance of what the Constitution says on Saturday when he claimed that our founding document commands us to kill or imprison socialists.
During a state party event, State Rep. Rodney Garcia insisted that it’s okay to shoot or jail socialists because the Constitution allegedly says so.
“So actually in the Constitution of the United States (if) they are found guilty of being a socialist member you either go to prison or are shot,” Garcia claimed.
Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, also a former congressman from Montana, attempted to steer the focus away from Garcia’s remarks, but Garcia continued.
“We have to do something,” he said, presumably urging violence and persecution of people with differing political views.
As we all know, President Donald Trump frequently accuses Democrats of being socialists, so Garcia is literally inciting violence against Democrats.
Journalists challenged Garcia to tell them where the Constitution says socialists are to be shot or jailed.
“Garcia could not point to where in the Constitution it says socialists could be shot or jailed,” The Billings Gazette reported.
Of course he couldn’t. That’s because there’s no such language to be found within the Constitution, nor any draft or even in the Federalist Papers. Garcia is making up language in the Constitution that simply does not exist.
Yet, he continued trying to justify killing or imprisoning socialists.
“They’re enemies of the free state,” Garcia said. “What do we do with our enemies in war? In Vietnam, (Afghanistan), all those. What did we do?”
He even went so far as to say that he passes on this stupidity to his own kid.
Needless to say, his remarks were so bad that the Montana Republican Party condemned him.
“The Montana Republican Party wholeheartedly condemns the comment that was made and under no circumstance is violence against someone with opposing political views acceptable,” Montana GOP executive director Spenser Merwin told the newspaper. “It’s disappointing that this isolated incident took away from the weekend’s events which showcased the strength of our statewide candidates and the importance of the upcoming election.”
Frankly, condemnation is not enough. Garcia should be expelled from the party and forced to resign. It’s bad enough that Republicans are disrespecting the Constitution in the Senate by rigging the impeachment trial for Trump, they should not be able to lie about what the Constitution says to justify violence against Democrats.
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