Florida’s Republican governor said he would seek to abolish the departments of Education, Commerce and Energy, as well as the IRS.
“If Congress will work with me on doing that, we’ll be able to reduce the size and scope of government,” he added. “If Congress won’t go that far, I’m going to use those agencies to push back against woke ideology and against the leftism that we see creeping into all institutions of American life.”
Republicans did claim that. They will lie about their opposition because a bunch of them are fascists. Respectability politics does nothing to solve that, fascists won’t care how respectful you are to them. Fascists already felt justified in their attack on the capitol and many Republicans in power still refuse to acknowledge that it was not justified. Current conservative rhetoric regarding transgender people is explicitly genocidal.