Donald Trump (at left, with purple highlights) was so eager to take credit for his endorsed candidates winning in Tuesday’s primaries that he bragged about some who didn’t even win– like Congressman Cline, who wasn’t on the ballot on Tuesday because he was the only candidate to file for the Republican nomination in the Sixth District.

Congressman Cline joined the overwhelming majority of House Republicans to vote to reinstall a Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

The vote Thursday was on an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that’s seen as a must-pass piece of legislation. It would have required the secretary of the Army to reinstall the memorial in its original location in the nation’s most celebrated military veteran graveyard and not designate it as anything other than a “reconciliation” memorial or monument.

The amendment, though, failed to get a majority, as Democrats voted unanimously against it and were joined by 24 GOP House members. But 192 Republicans, or about 87% of the party in the House, voted in favor…

A defense policy bill that passed over then-President Donald Trump’s veto in the waning days of his administration required the monument’s removal.

The art piece was unveiled in 1914 and sculpted by a Confederate veteran, Moses Jacob Ezekiel. Made of bronze and resting on a 32-foot granite pedestal, it featured a woman symbolizing the South holding a laurel wreath, a plow handle and a pruning hook, a reference to the biblical promise of a time when swords would be turned into plowshares.

Below her was a frieze of 32 figures, which “depict mythical gods alongside Southern soldiers and civilians,” according to the cemetery’s website. Among those figures are a Confederate soldier handing off his infant to an enslaved African American woman for caretaking and an enslaved man in uniform following his owner into battle.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries asked: “What Confederate tradition are you upholding? Is it slavery? Rape? Kidnap? Jim Crow? Lynching? Racial oppression? Or all of the above? What exactly is the Confederate tradition that extreme [Make America Great Again] Republicans in 2024 are upholding?”

In the debate on the amendment, Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) said the memorial’s dedication in 1914, well after the Civil War and Reconstruction, and its subject matter show it was not meant to be unifying.

“When this monument was placed, the gentleman said it was for reconciliation, but for who? Not for the Black Americans who saw that monument then, and even today, and see the images of a mammy and a loyal slave following his master into battle. They know what that means,” she said.

Ironically the vote came on Flag Day, which Congressman Cline recognized with a post on his Facebook page.

Among those who served under that banner are the forces who defeated the Confederates that the memorial mythologizes.

Instead of honoring those who seceded from and fought against the union represented by that flag, Cline should pay tribute to some of the true heroes: the people of the Shenandoah Valley who dared to oppose and resist the Confederacy and to stand with the union.

Congressman Cline has announced his candidacy to chair the House Republican Study Committee, “the largest conservative caucus in Congress” that “has provided past chairs with a seat at key meetings with leadership.”

• The chairmanship has served as a springboard into high-profile positions within the House GOP, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and former Vice President Mike Pence having served in the role.

• The group has played an influential role in shaping the House GOP’s policy agenda, laying out conservative proposals that have been utilized in Republican messaging and pushed legislation to the right.

Cline currently serves as the RSC’s Budget and Spending Task Force chair. In March the RSC released a report (which Cline happily introduced) that included plans to:

• Slash Social Security and Medicare benefits for future retirees.

• Ban universal free school meals.

• Shred the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which funds local law enforcement and community safety.

• Enact the Life at Conception Act, which would ban abortion at any stage of pregnancy after conception for any reason and make in vitro fertilization impossible.

Of course Cline can’t become RSC chair, and achieve greater GOP glory, if he is defeated for reelection in November.

On Tuesday, Congressman Cline and 45 other House Republicans voted for an amendment sponsored by his bizarre and chronically deranged colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene to slash funding for NATO.

“My amendment strikes funding for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO Security Investment Program. My amendment would strike over $433 million in NATO funding from the bill. America should not be doling out hundreds of millions of dollars to international organizations to help them fight their enemies, especially when they are unwilling to fight for themselves,” Greene began, echoing rhetoric from former President Donald Trump.

Greene concluded her remarks, saying, “But yet, America is beyond our pledge. We are spending in 2023, 3.5% of our GDP. But yet we don’t do anything to defend our own country and our own borders. This is why Americans would love to see Congress take action, action to defund NATO, and stop spending hundreds of millions of their hard earned money to foreign countries to defend these foreign countries, while we don’t defend our own country and our own people.”

 Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz responded: “I think the sponsor of the amendment has shown pretty clear evidence that she has no idea what the NATO Security Investment Program is actually funding.”

“So that we can make sure that we invest properly in infrastructure for a vast array of training facilities, of national security facilities, of hangars that contain our airplanes, military aircraft that cost billions of dollars. So everything about what the amendment does actually makes our own service members who are fighting overseas to defend our national security interests and to defend our country less safe…

“Madam chair, we have a responsibility to make sure that the infrastructure that we fund is in pristine, well-kept, well-kept condition. And what the sponsor of the amendments would do is decimate our ability to do that. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic. And we should not not support this amendment, and members should vote against it.”

Voting to make American service members less safe is, as Wasserman Schultz said, irresponsible and unpatriotic. Yet that’s exactly what Ben Cline did.

The amendment was defeated by a vote of 354 to 46.

Since his election to Congress, Cline has had a history of voting against NATO, an alliance which protects the US as well as other member nations and which is needed now as much as it was during the Cold War to stand up to Russian aggression in Ukraine and threats to other countries.

Someone should ask him why he detests the alliance so much.

The June Rockbridge Advocate reports:

The estimate for repairs to the Glen Maury Park swimming pool came in at $650,000. The money for the repairs will come from the city’s federal American Recovery Act funds. (Congressman Ben Cline voted against the measure.) The Health Department said without the repairs, the city would have to close the pool.