The Republican party has made it official. Republicans no longer support American democracy and consider their violent attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 to overthrow President Biden’s election a form of “legitimate political discourse.”
That really shouldn’t be news to anybody. The nearly unanimous vote by the Republican National Committee last month simply codified Republicans’ contempt for democracy that was obvious throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. That’s why it ended so spectacularly with the violent mob attack by Trump’s supporters trying to stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s election.
Trump finally made the history books just like he bragged he would. Trump tweeted his praise to the rioters calling their insurrection justified “when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. . . . Remember this day forever!”
The surprising part is Republicans now expect everyone else to forget about what happened that day by November’s midterm election. Republicans believe if they pretend there’s nothing wrong with an American political party resorting to political violence to remain in power after losing an election, they’ll still have a political advantage in the midterms like opposition parties usually do after a new president is elected. But American politics will never be normal again as long as Trump retains his control over the Republican party.
Trump Dictates GOP Agenda
That’s why it was foolish for the RNC to condemn Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for having enough political courage to join a bipartisan congressional investigation to prevent the violent attack on democracy that threatened to hang Vice President Mike Pence and murder members of the House and Senate from ever happening again.
The RNC passed the resolution that could have been written by Trump himself denouncing Cheney and Kinzinger for “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
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That’s a bizarre description of a brutal attack resulting in seven deaths and serious injuries to 140 police officers, many with permanent brain damage or physical disabilities after being beaten unconscious with baseball bats, hockey sticks, iron bars and flag poles. Ordinary citizens do not usually engage in political discourse with their elected representatives by rampaging through the Capitol breaking down doors, busting up furniture and smearing their own excrement on the walls.
Rewarding the Rioters
Americans will have plenty of reminders before November of the horrors of that day many watched live on television. Trump reportedly did the same, gleefully rewinding his favorite parts. The bipartisan congressional committee will televise testimony from witnesses about the presidential planning behind those events.
Just as damaging to Republicans could be Trump actively campaigning for the worst candidates he can find to endorse in those midterms. Trump already has promised if he’s re-elected in 2024 (and he’s still the party’s leading candidate) he’ll reward the Capitol rioters. “If it requires pardons, we’ll give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly” by being prosecuted, Trump told a Texas rally.
Several advisors to the defeated president said Trump seriously considered issuing a blanket pardon for all participants in the Capitol attack in the final days of his presidency before Biden’s inauguration. He was talked out of it since no one had been charged with any crimes yet.
Biden’s Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland has now charged more than 700 of them. That includes 11 Oath Keepers militia members facing up to 20 years in prison charged with seditious conspiracy to violently overthrow the government with a large stockpile of assault weapons hidden nearby.
GOP Election Fraud
Ten Wisconsin Republican party officials including the former state chairman Andrew Hitt are under investigation for submitting fraudulent documents to the U.S. Senate and the National Archives claiming to be “duly elected” electors casting the state’s 10 electoral votes for Trump even though Biden won Wisconsin. Republicans made such false claims in seven states Trump lost to create confusion over which electors legitimately represented those states.
Vice President Pence thwarted the plot by refusing a demand from Trump that he throw out the electoral votes in states with conflicting slates of electors when Pence presided over the certification of Biden’s election. That would have reversed Trump’s election defeat.
“I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence told the Federalist Society on the same day the RNC declared its own support for Trump’s destruction of democracy. “The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”
Pence is one of the few Republican politicians who have ever aggressively acted to preserve democracy. Democracy also remains the preferred form of government of the overwhelming majority of American voters.
That’s why voters in November have to start removing all those Republicans from public office who no longer support democracy.
