The Republicans’ case against Ilhan Omar was wrong, but successful

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have grand legislative ambitions. He has no policy agenda to speak of. There’s no list of governing priorities that he keeps in his jacket pocket. The California Republican wanted the gavel and the great office with a beautiful view, and now that he paid a high price to get those rewards, the congressman appears largely content.

But he did place a great emphasis on one goal: The GOP leader cared a lot about Democratic committee assignments.

Early last year, 11 months before the midterm elections, McCarthy said one of his top priorities — if Republicans took back the majority — was removing Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee. He recently did exactly that.

But McCarthy also said in early 2022 that he was determined to kick Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota off the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Yesterday, as NBC News reported, the speaker checked this off his to-do list, too.

The final tally was 218 to 211, falling neatly along party lines. (Republican Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio voted “present.”)

The outcome was in doubt up until fairly recently. A handful of House GOP members balked at the idea, including Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana, who recently issued a statement describing such efforts as a “charade,” adding, “Speaker McCarthy needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress and start governing for a change.”

McCarthy ignored the skepticism and plowed forward. Indeed, he invested real political capital into this, making clear that this was a real priority for the speaker’s office.

The good news for McCarthy is that his efforts paid off: He pressured his conference to back him up, and in the end, his members followed his lead. The bad news is this was a wildly unnecessary move.

The GOP’s case against the Minnesotan effectively came down to three talking points.

1. Omar’s history of antisemitism was a dealbreaker. It is true that the congresswoman has made offensive comments in the past, but she’s apologized repeatedly and publicly, explaining that her rhetoric was the result of ignorance, not malice.

Just as importantly, the Republicans’ argument is difficult to take seriously. McCarthy and his cohorts had no qualms about rewarding Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, despite her ugly record of antisemitism, and even McCarthy himself has dipped his toes in the same ugly waters.

2. Democrats set a standard that Republicans are now following. Last year, Democrats stripped two right-wing Republicans — Greene and Arizona’s Paul Gosar — of their committee assignments, which led GOP officials to believe they were justified in doing the same thing. “You were warned,” Republican Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas told Democrats. “You were warned in the last Congress.” Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, added this week that the GOP was simply “following” the “precedent” set by Democrats.

The problem, of course, is that the relevant details are qualitatively different. Greene and Gosar were punished — with some bipartisan support — because they expressed support for political violence. If Omar had done the same thing, the GOP could credibly claim it was simply following the Democratic standard. But that’s simply not the case here.

3. Punishing Omar wasn’t retaliatory. This wasn’t about payback, Republicans said, it was about doing the right thing.

Please. Not only was the third talking point at odds with the second, but you don’t need a mind-reader to realize yesterday’s vote was partisan political hardball. Omar was already serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and as a Black Muslim woman with a background as a refugee, the Minnesota Democrat brought a valuable perspective to the panel’s work.

Republicans decided it was time to bring that to an immediate end, following through on a retaliatory scheme a year in the making.