It’s been nearly two weeks since U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was removed as Speaker of the House, and pressure continues to mount for the spot to be filled after U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) failed to get enough votes during the first round of voting Tuesday.
U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover), who endorsed Jordan for speaker, said during a recent appearance on FM Talk 106.5’s “The Jeff Poor Show” that he was concerned what the politically divided House was doing with the speaker vote was “dangerous” given the recent attacks on Israel and the general state of division in the United States.
“We’re at a point now, Jeff, where what we’re doing is dangerous, and it was probably dangerous from the very beginning,” Palmer said. “I’m not going to say this is precisely what prompted Hamas to attack Israel, but if you’ve been following what’s going on in Israel politically, they’re very divided. It’s very dysfunctional right now… We have enemies. Israel obviously has enemies, and your enemies will take advantage of your weaknesses. So I’m very concerned that if we continue with what is now a dysfunctional House, it could lead to some things that we would really rather avoid.”
Palmer pointed to Alabama’s newly drawn congressional district map as further evidence of the divide among Americans and said that the court’s decisions “institutionalizes racial division with lines on a map.”
“We shouldn’t be making decisions that further divide people. We’re divided enough,” he said. “This country may be the most divided it’s been since the late 1850s, early 1860s. And I think it’s dangerous. I don’t think we want to have a country where a black person thinks that a white person can’t legitimately represent them or a white person thinks a black person can’t legitimately represent them.”
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