When Donald Trump lost the election in November 2020 by more than seven million votes, the Republican Party had a choice: accept the defeat and start working to return to honest conservative values, or follow Trump’s Big Lie that Democrats had stolen the election.
Later, after 60 courts rejected Trump’s claims of voting irregularities that might overturn Biden’s victory in the Electoral College, Republicans had another choice after Jan. 6, when Trump sent a mob to the Capitol to “Stop the Steal.” The mob erected a gallows on the Capitol lawn, then stormed past police lines to enter the Capitol, threatened Vice President Pence and members of Congress and forced suspension of the electoral vote certification.
Trump reportedly enjoyed watching the riots on TV for more than three hours, as he refused pleas to call off his supporters or send the D.C. National Guard to relieve besieged Capitol and Metro police.
The rioters who were sent to the Capitol by Trump injured more than 140 police officers defending the Capitol, and led to the deaths of five people, while members of Congress, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Pence were forced to seek shelter. Rioters literally smeared feces in the halls of Congress, broke into congressional offices and vandalized the Speaker’s office.
Republican leaders, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, criticized Trump in the week after the Capitol riots, but they closed ranks to support Trump when the Democratic House moved to impeach the president for his role in inciting the riots. Republican leaders not only refused to support Trump’s impeachment; they also rejected attempts by Democrats to conduct a bipartisan congressional investigation of the riots. So the House in June 2021 voted to conduct its own investigation and, after McCarthy refused to cooperate, Speaker Pelosi named Republican Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to join seven Democrats on the select committee.
Finally, the Republican National Committee on Feb. 4 embraced its role as the party that will seize power by whatever means necessary as the RNC formally endorsed the coverup of the riots.
Party leaders officially declared the events that led to the attack on the Capitol “legitimate political discourse,” and rebuked Cheney and Kinzinger for participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
The party leadership said the behavior of Cheney and Kinzinger “has been destructive to the institution of the US House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.”
The censure resolution was watered down from an initial version that called directly for the House Republican Conference to “expel” Cheney and Kinzinger “without delay.” That demand was dropped, but the language condemning the attack on “legitimate political discourse” was then added.
The censure likely will increase pressure on McCarthy to kick Cheney and Kinzinger out of the House Republican Conference.
“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”
But the official censure made no such distinction, nor is the House committee examining normal political debate.
The censure brought some dissent within the party. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, tweeted, “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”
Romney did not mention that the party chairwoman who orchestrated the censure resolution, Ms. McDaniel, is his niece.
The censure was also condemned by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who, like Romney, voted to remove Trump from office for inciting the insurrection, and Gov. Larry Hogan, R-Md., who called Feb. 4 “a sad day for my party — and the country.”
Only a few of 168 RNC members at the meeting opposed the resolution, which passed in a voice vote, NBC News reported.
The Jan. 6 committee has interviewed more than 475 witnesses, the vast majority of whom either volunteered to testify or agreed to without a subpoena, the Washington Post reported. It has no prosecutorial powers, and is charged with drawing up a report and producing recommendations to prevent anything similar from happening again.
It’s up to the Department of Justice to prosecute those responsible for the violent insurrection. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he will go where the evidence leads. Evidence seems to be pointing toward Trump, but as much as some would like to see his “perp walk,” we understand prosecutors are carefully building their case.
Some Republicans have expressed concern that the RNC defense of the insurrectionists will blow back on the party in the midterm elections. Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn, lamented that the censure was a distraction from what he told the New York Times was “this abysmal administration’s record.” (That’s what Republicans call COVID vaccines for all who want them, and a booming economy.)
In addition to the formal censure at the party’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City, the RNC also made plans to fund a primary challenge against Cheney in Wyoming — after state Republican leaders passed a special rule to recognize Harriet Hageman, her challenger, as the party’s presumptive nominee. The party may help Hageman, who trails far behind Cheney in fundraising, as Cheney has raised nearly $5 million to Hageman’s $380,000.
David Bossie, a top Trump ally who led the censure effort, called the RNC move a “one-two punch” against Cheney that signaled a message from the GOP at the state and national levels.
Before the censure vote, Cheney said Republicans were “hostage” to the former president. “I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what,” Cheney said.
Kinzinger is not seeking reelection, but he is proud of his work on the Jan. 6 committee. “This is a defining moment in American politics and the RNC’s future. Are you for authoritarianism, are you against democracy, or are you going to wake up to that slide and come back to actual democracy again?”
As evidence piles up that Trump and his allies were involved in coordinating the Capitol attack in an attempt to overturn the election, many Republicans may believe the time has come to separate the party from the disgraced former president, and that could make for a messy breakup. But Republican leaders also must separate the party from its attraction to neofascist authoritarianism. That will require reversal of state voter suppression laws and a recommitment to democracy. Republicans might not be comfortable leaving elections up to the voters anytime soon. That’s why it’s still important for Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to join fellow Democrats in setting aside the filibuster to pass national voting rights standards. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2022
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