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GOP Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois are condemning fellow Republicans days after a white gunman motivated by the right-wing “great replacement” theory killed 10 people in a racist shooting in western New York state.
“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” Cheney wrote on Twitter.
“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them,” she tweeted.
The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, who reportedly made previous threats against his high school, allegedly drove 200 miles to a grocery store located in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo and opened fire. Eleven of the 13 victims in the shooting were Black.
A 180-page manifesto that circulated online, believed to have been authored by the suspect, outlined the “Great Replacement Theory,” a racist conspiracy theory that white people were being replaced by minorities in the United States and elsewhere.
Kinzinger, who, along with Cheney, is one of two Republicans on the House’s Jan. 6 commission, also called out the party’s leadership for not condemning the racism that fueled the attack in Buffalo.
“Here is my replacement theory: we need to replace @EliseStefanik, @GOPLeader, @RepMTG, @CawthornforNC and a number of others,” Kinzinger said Sunday in a tweet referring to McCarthy, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and hard-line Trump supporters Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn.
“The replacement theory they are pushing/tolerating is getting people killed,” said Kinzinger.
Stefanik’s office in a statement rejected that criticism.
“Any implication or attempt to blame the heinous shooting in Buffalo on the Congresswoman is a new disgusting low for the left, their Never Trump allies and the sycophant stenographers in the media,” said Alex DeGrasse, a senior adviser to Stefanik.
Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican, is one of a handful of GOP lawmakers that had previously echoed the racist “great replacement” theory that the gunman wrote about in his manifesto, according to The Washington Post.
The Post acknowledged Stefanik had “not pushed the theory by name,” but charged her and other Republicans with “echoing” the “far-right ideology as part of anti-immigrant rhetoric that has fired up the Republican base ahead of the midterm elections.”
