Ben Sasse’s op-ed: ‘QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within’

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska is accusing the QAnon conspiracy theory of “destroying the GOP from within” in a scathing op-ed in The Atlantic.
• The senator also called out fellow Republicans Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
• Sasse is a vocal Trump critic but has not said if he will vote to convict the president.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse on Saturday said the QAnon conspiracy theory is “destroying the GOP from within” in an op-ed in The Atlantic. He also called out his fellow Republicans — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

“Until last week, many party leaders and consultants thought they could preach the Constitution while winking at QAnon,” the senator wrote in The Atlantic op-ed. “They can’t. The GOP must reject conspiracy theories or be consumed by them.”

QAnon is a far right-wing conspiracy-theory group that focused on the belief that President Donald Trump is pursuing a campaign against ‘enemies’ in the “deep state” and a child sex-trafficking ring controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles and cannibals.

Sasse described Greene as a “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” for showing support to QAnon. Greene has since rejected the group. The senator of Nebraska also called out Rep. McCarthy for failing to “disavow her campaign.”

“She once ranted that ‘there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it,’” Sasse wrote. “McCarthy failed the leadership test and sat on the sidelines.”

Sasse criticized Greene’s plan to file articles of impeachment against President-elect Joe Biden the day after his inauguration.

In an interview with 11Alive on Sunday, Greene responded to Sasse’s Atlantic op-ed.

“Your viewers are people in Georgia,” she said. ‘They don’t care what Sen. Ben Sasse has to say. What they care about is their election integrity. They care about their votes not being stolen, and nobody gives a flip about Ben Sasse and what he has to say.

He’s a never Trumper, he’s a turncoat Republican and our voters could care less about what he has to say about me or anyone else,” Greene said.

A vocal Trump critic, Sasse did not mention how he’ll vote on impeachment. 

“If and when the House sends its article of impeachment against Trump to the Senate, I will be a juror in his trial, and thus what I can say in advance is limited,” the senator wrote.  

 “But no matter what happens in that trial, the Republican Party faces a separate reckoning. … We can dedicate ourselves to defending the Constitution and perpetuating our best American institutions and traditions, or we can be a party of conspiracy theories, cable-news fantasies, and the ruin that comes with them.”

Source: Fox News