Democrats should make the ‘Bee-Gees’ the face of the Republican Party

In 2018, Republican campaign ads attacked dozens of House Democrats for “standing with Nancy Pelosi.” If Pelosi became Speaker, the ads warned, the Democrats would raise taxes, cut defense appropriations, open the southern border to any and every immigrant, and impeach President Trump. Two years later, perfectly cast for their race, religion, and policy positions, “The Squad” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — joined Pelosi as the “clowns,” “crazies,” and “socialists” the RNC loves to loathe.

In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, which will decide the party that controls the House of Representatives, the Democrats should take a page from this playbook. They should identify six House members as the face of the Republican Party: Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — the “Bee-Gees.” In ads aired around the country, the DNC should showcase the extremist views that have taken over the GOP:

• Chair of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Biggs supports banning abortions with no exceptions for rape and incest. Biggs voted against the COVID-19 relief bill because it provided financial support to same sex couples. He voted against re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. He opposes allowing judges to order that guns be taken away from military veterans deemed mentally incompetent. According to Ali Alexander, an early founder of the “Stop the Steal Movement,” Biggs met with him to make sure that Trump supporters put “maximum pressure” on members of Congress while they were voting to certify the 2020 presidential election results.
• Having declared “I am the militia,” Lauren Boebert refused to say whether she carries a gun on the House floor. She tweeted information about the whereabouts of Speaker Pelosi during the riot at the Capitol. She has said of QAnon (which alleges that a global pedophile ring includes Democratic politicians and features secret executions, clones and an apocalyptic “Reckoning”): “I hope this is real because it only means America is stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values.”
• Mo Brooks told the MAGA crowd on Jan. 6, “today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” He believes racism no longer exists in the United States, Democrats have launched “a war on whites,” and has claimed he would do anything “short of shooting” undocumented immigrants to get them out of the country. At a hearing on global warming, Brooks attributed the rise of sea levels to “soil or rocks or whatever” falling into the ocean and forcing “the bottom to move up.”
• Matt Gaetz defended President Trump’s “shithole countries” comment, declaring “everywhere you go in Haiti all you see is sheet metal and garbage.” Gaetz mocked COVID-19 guidelines by wearing a gas mask on the floor of the House of Representatives. He declared there is “pretty compelling evidence that some people who assaulted the Capitol were masquerading as Trump supporters. And in fact, they were members of the violent terrorist group, antifa.”
• According to Louie Gohmert, the mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., occurred because many Americans — including the perpetrator — do not fear God’s vengeful wrath and nobody in the theater had a gun to take the shooter down. Gohmert claimed the Obama administration was infiltrated by Muslim Brotherhood members. He insists that pregnant black women have been sent to the United States to spawn “natural-born terrorists” to “destroy our way of life twenty or thirty years down the road.” Having been diagnosed with the Coronavirus, Gohmert said, “I can’t help but wonder if by keeping a mask on and keeping it in place, I might have put some germs — some virus — onto the mask and breathed it in.”
• Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed a wildfire in California was caused by a laser from space, controlled by a prominent Jewish family. She has hinted that the Clinton family ordered JFK Jr. killed so he would not run against Hillary for New York’s U.S. Senate seat. She claimed the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary school and Parkland high school were “false flag events,” designed by Deep State officials to restrict access to guns. Amidst discussions of ending Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker, Greene indicated, “a bullet to the head would be quicker.”

Unwilling to incur the wrath of Donald Trump, Republicans have not reined in the “Bee-Gees.”  Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-Calif.) refused to remove Greene from the influential Education and Budget committees.

Personifying the noxious new normal of a once Grand Old Party, Greene and the other “Bee-Gees” could help Democrats increase their majorities in the House and Senate in 2022 — if the Democrats will learn lessons in branding from Republicans.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”