A matter of values
A very very far-right Congressional Representative, Paul Gosar, has a bunch of siblings who did a political ad…for his opponent.
The brothers and sisters — Tim, Jennifer, Gaston, Joan, Grace and David — appeared in campaign advertisements for David Brill, the Democrat hoping to unseat Gosar in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District in the upcoming midterm election.
The Gosar siblings framed their endorsement of Brill as a matter of values, saying their brother, who has long drawn headlines for his far-right views, and his politics were simply too much for them to stomach.
“We gotta stand up for our good name,” said brother David Gosar in the advertisement. “This is not who we are.”
“I couldn’t be quiet any longer, nor should any of us be,” said sister Grace Gosar.
“I think my brother has traded a lot of the values we had at our kitchen table,” said another sister, Joan.
The Post talked to David Gosar.
David said he doesn’t talk to his brother much anymore. The split came around the time of his congressional run, when, David said, his brother told him he believed the “birther” theory that President Obama’s birth certificate is fake. (A 2010 clip from Politico quotes Paul Gosar as declining to say whether he believed Obama was born in the United States, saying it was “for the courts and for other people to decide.”)
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, you have to be kidding me,’ and then he went and got elected,” David Gosar said. “I’m not going to break bread with a racist.”
(It actually isn’t for the courts and other people to decide, because there was never any reason to think Obama wasn’t born in the US in the first place. Nobody gets to “decide” he wasn’t born here when he was.)
Rep. Paul Gosar knows how to get attention.
In January, he drew bipartisan rebukes after he said that he asked the Capitol Police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to check IDs at the State of the Union to arrest and deport any undocumented immigrants in attendance.
At least one senator, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), planned to bring an undocumented “dreamer” to the speech as a guest.
The next month, Gosar said FBI and Department of Justice officials such as Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, and former FBI director James B. Comey should face “treason” charges due to developments in the Russia investigation.
This summer, he spoke at a rally in London for one of Britain’s most notorious anti-Muslim campaigners, Tommy Robinson, drawing rebukes from Muslim-American groups.
But perhaps his most notorious moment came in 2017 in an interview with Vice News, when he spread a baseless conspiracy theory that the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that summer had been “created by the left.”
He’ll probably win anyway, because his district is profoundly Trump.
If I ran, my siblings would make an ad against me. I can see it now, what they’d say. “She wants to take your taxes and give it to black people who won’t work”. “She’ll take your Bible away.” “She wants to force all women to have abortions.” “She wants all women to be more like men.”
Siblings. Who needs ’em?
Not to imply that I don’t find what these siblings are doing to be filled with integrity and principle. (I think my siblings would be filled with principle, too. The only difference is that I don’t agree with their principles.)
With Republicans supposedly being all about family values, that advert could harm Brill’s already slim chances of pulling off a victory. It goes without saying that the Gosar’s’ denunciation of their brother was an applaudable action, but their reasons will not impress the Trump, God and family values crowd since Paul Gosar’s views mirror their own.
The problem with the ad is that it might deter those voters who are big on family values but not so much on the racism (not actively anti-racist as such, just that racism isn’t high on their requirements for a senator) and may have preferred Brill’s policies, but who will see the Gosars as putting their personal ideals over family – a big no-no – and Brill as a man willing to encourage and embrace their disloyalty to family. If their choice is to vote for either a racist or for a candidate who is – as I’m sure it will be framed – against family values and for disloyalty, the racist wins every time.
iknklast – were you to run, you would have my vote, early and often.
Mind you, I like knowing that my siblings couldn’t be arsed, were I ever to run for any public office.
Thanks, clamboy. If I ever find time, since I work around 90 hours a week, and write at least one novel and four plays a year, I might try to take on the school board or city council. We managed in 2016 to totally botch our opportunity to have our first woman mayor ever.