Rob Portman has done more damage to America than Marjorie Taylor Greene
Rob Portman, a long-serving senator from Ohio, is Greene’s antithesis. Over many decades in Washington, he has developed a reputation as a sober and serious policy wonk. His decision to retire next year has been greeted with predictable hand wringing. A Wall Street Journal columnist lamented: “He is a rightly respected figure. He tries to advance serious legislation. He doesn’t spend all his time talking on television.”
Yet if we are to apportion responsibility for the Republican Party’s descent into irrationality and authoritarianism, I would argue that Portman is far more to blame than Greene. That’s because there are a lot more Portmans than Greenes in Congress. Greene’s kookiness resonates with many GOP voters (30 percent of Republicans expressed a positive view of QAnon in a recent poll), but there are only a few House members who are as flaky as she is. However, the House and especially the Senate are full of Portman types: long-serving, mainstream Republicans who pride themselves on being practical problem-solvers — but who did not lift a finger to stop the takeover of their party by the lunatic fringe.
Portman announced in October 2016 that he could no longer support Donald Trump after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which the GOP presidential candidate bragged about assaulting women. Yet after Trump won, Portman did support him. He compiled one of the most pro-Trump voting records in Congress, voting with the president’s positions 88.3 percent of the time. That’s actually higher than Trump lickspittles Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
Portman is now critical of President Biden for pursuing a $1.9 trillion economic relief package without any Republican support. (Portman favors a much smaller alternative advanced by 10 Republicans.) Yet Trump pushed his most ambitious pieces of legislation — a $1.5 trillion tax cut and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act — without making any attempt to win Democratic support. And both times Portman voted for the GOP legislation. Portman also supported the outrageous Republican decision not to grant a hearing to President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in an election year while approving Trump’s nominee right before the 2020 election on a party-line vote. Republicans such as Portman use calls for “unity” as a code word for Democratic concessions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/01/rob-portman-has-done-more-damage-america-than-marjorie-taylor-greene/
