She is intensely frustrating. It would have taken everything in me not to scream in her face that the problem with conspiracy theories is that they are lies and in the case of QAnon defamatory disgusting lies which are turning people into stupid, violent robots — you idiot.
Sadly, she represents the majority of Republicans:
Three months after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try to overturn his November election loss, about half of Republicans believe the siege was largely a non-violent protest or was the handiwork of left-wing activists “trying to make Trump look bad,” a new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found.
Six in 10 Republicans also believe the false claim put out by Trump that November’s presidential election “was stolen” from him due to widespread voter fraud, and the same proportion of Republicans think he should run again in 2024, the March 30-31 poll showed.
Since the Capitol attack, Trump, many of his allies within the Republican Party and right-wing media personalities have publicly painted a picture of the day’s events jarringly at odds with reality.
Hundreds of Trump’s supporters, mobilized by the former president’s false claims of a stolen election, climbed walls of the Capitol building and smashed windows to gain entry while lawmakers were inside voting to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory. The rioters – many of them sporting Trump campaign gear and waving flags – also included known white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys.
In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump said the rioters posed “zero threat.” Other prominent Republicans, such as Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, have publicly doubted whether Trump supporters were behind the riot.
There are a few Republicans pushing back but they are the fringe. That woman who asks why conspiracy theories are a problem is the mainstream.
Republican Rep. Peter Meijer has a warning for his party: He fears baseless conspiracy theories like QAnon will destroy the GOP from within if Republicans don’t decisively and unequivocally condemn the false and dangerous beliefs and take action to stop their spread.”
The fact that a significant plurality, if not potentially a majority, of our voters have been deceived into this creation of an alternate reality could very well be an existential threat to the party,” Meijer, who was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting the deadly attack at the US Capitol, told CNN in an interview.
Frequently described as a virtual cult, QAnonis a sprawling far-right conspiracy theory that promotes the absurd and false claim that Trump has been locked in a battle against a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles made up of prominent Democratic politicians and liberal celebrities. Members of the violent pro-Trump mob that stormedthe Capitol had ties to QAnon, and the conspiracy theory has made its way from online message boards into the political mainstream in recent years.”
When we say QAnon, you have the sort of extreme forms, but you also just have this softer, gradual undermining of any shared, collective sense of truth,” Meijer said. The Michigan freshman believes conspiracy theories fuel “incredibly unrealistic and unachievable expectations” and “a cycle of disillusionment and alienation” that could lead conservative voters to sit out elections or, in a worst-case scenario, turn to political violence, like what happened on January 6.
How deeply far-right conspiracy theories take hold within the Republican Party, and what the party does to either embrace or reject them, will have major consequences for the future of the GOP and American politics.Meijer is far from the only Republican in Congress disturbed by the rise of QAnon, but he is one of a rare few willing to publicly and repeatedly denounce it.
Republicans who speak out risk a backlash, and many would rather dismiss, downplay or ignore the issue. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, famously signaled outright support for the conspiracy theory before she was elected to office, though she has recently attempted to distance herself from it.CNN reached out to the offices of more than a dozen GOP members of Congress to request interviews for this story, and only two agreed to participate.
The lonely voices within the GOP who continue to take a stand must now grapple with what it would take for the party to turn away from conspiracy theories.
Kinzinger hopes that whatever the outcome in the special election, his endorsement will show like-minded Republicans they’re not alone and encourage others to run for office on a similar platform.”I think what’s important is that people see there are people out there that support you, that will back you if you do the right thing,” he said. “It’s a long-term battle for the soul of the party.”
The Illinois congressman describes the danger he believes QAnon poses in stark terms, saying he’s concerned its corrosive impact threatens to pull apart the very fabric of American democracy.”
Do I think there’s going to be a civil war? No. Do I rule it out? No. Do I think it’s a concern, do I think it’s something we have to be worried about? Yeah,” he said.Former GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia is outspoken in his opposition to QAnon, and he believes that is part of the reason he was voted out of office.
While serving in Congress, Riggleman co-sponsored a bipartisan resolution condemning QAnon that passed in the House overwhelmingly, though seventeen Republicans voted in opposition and 34 didn’t vote at all. But he thinks most Republican lawmakers “want to have it both ways” when it comes to the issue of conspiracy theories.
The former congressman said Republicans frequently try to make it look like they’re standing up for principle, while at the same time “winking and nodding” at conspiracy theories in an effort to get more votes.It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how widespread belief in QAnon is in the Republican Party. According to the Pew Research Center, roughly a quarter of Republicans who know about QAnon view its supporters favorably, though nearly half of Republicans say they know nothing at all about the conspiracy theory.
Riggleman believes a major problem right now is that there’s a strong “contingent of GOP voters who have completely lost themselves in the rabbit hole of conspiracies, disinformation and grievance politics,” and most Republican lawmakers “want to get re-elected so they would rather have people like me shut the hell up, even though they know I’m right.”
“It’s almost like we’re facts-based pariahs that are trying to sort of rein in this insanity that’s gone on,” he said.
.[…]
As the GOP charts a path forward after Trump lost the White House, Kinzinger said he does not want to see Republicans push voting laws based on false claims of widespread election fraud.”The narrative is almost we have to tighten our election system so that the next election isn’t stolen again, and that is garbage,” he said. […]
Meijer is concerned that embracing conspiracy theories like QAnon could make it harder for the GOP to recalibrate and rebuild after losing the White House and being in the minority in both chambers.”I think it’s all part of this broader trend of blame casting,” the congressman said. “In the case of QAnon, it’s well, why am I in the position I’m in? Well, it’s because others are holding me down. Why did we lose this election? Well, it wasn’t because our candidate wasn’t the best or had made mistakes, it was because it was stolen. It’s these ways of distancing oneself from responsibility and accountability.”
There is a rot at the center of the GOP and the party has decayed rapidly.