GOP R.I.P

 

“[O]rdinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse”                                                                                                                                                              on  January 6th 2021

 “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

— U.S. Constitution, Article VI, clause 3

“I was electrocuted again… and again… and again.”                                                                                                                                             

Capital Police Officer Michael Fanone in congressional testimony, recalling his being assaulted in the January 6th attack on the Capitol

“President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election…There are those in our party who believe that, as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, that I possessed unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes…. 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.”

Former Trump V.P., Mike Pence, in a February 4th speech to a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in Florida

The Republican National Committee – e.g., the Republican Party – hit the self-destruct button on February 4th with this official statement:

WHEREAS, Representatives [Republican House Representatives Liz] Cheney and [Adam] Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee hereby formally censures Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and shall immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party...

On February 5th, former President Donald John Trump issued this statement in support of the above official Republican Party statement under a “Save America, President Donald J. Trump” banner: “Congratulations to the Republican National Committee (RNC) and its Chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, in their great ruling censuring Liz Cheney and Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, two horrible RINOs who put themselves ahead of their Country. They have almost no approval ratings, and the Republican Party would be far better off without them.” Trump is under investigation in New York for bank fraud and tax evasion, in Georgia for unlawful election interference and Washington, D.C. for criminal conspiracy and sedition. 

The list of those “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” arrested for the January 6, 2021 Capitol invasion can be found here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases Those still wanted by the FBI can be found here: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/capitol-violence  The FBI’s official statement on point:

“The FBI is seeking the public’s assistance in identifying individuals who made unlawful entry into the U.S. Capitol building and committed various other alleged criminal violations, such as destruction of property, assaulting law enforcement personnel, targeting members of the media for assault, and other unlawful conduct, on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

“We have deployed our full investigative resources and are working closely with our federal, state, and local partners to aggressively pursue those involved in these criminal activities.” These are the people that Donald Trump, if reelected, plans to pardon.

While we’ve never really ever faced a political party hell-bent on voter suppression and in negating the Constitution as we see today, long ago, America experienced how an ill-prepared president destroyed an American political party: “Many have called Donald Trump’s unexpected takeover of a major political party unprecedented; but it’s not. A similar scenario unfolded in 1848, when General Zachary Taylor, a roughhewn career soldier who had never even voted in a presidential election, conquered the Whig Party.

“[At the nominating convention,] 62 percent of Taylor’s votes still came from Southern Whigs, who calculated that Taylor’s nomination would kill the abolitionist movement: ‘The political advantages which have been secured by Taylor’s nomination, are impossible to overestimate, cheered one [obviously pro-slavery] Southerner.

“The nomination left many other Whigs dissatisfied. Even though the convention nominated the loyalist Millard Fillmore as vice president, many lamented that Taylor’s popularity had trumped party loyalty and principles. The party had not even drafted a platform for this undefined, unqualified leader. Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune pronounced the convention ‘a slaughterhouse of Whig principles.’ The Jonesborough Whig did not know ‘which most to despise, the vanity and insolence of Gen. Taylor, or the creeping servility’ of the Whig Convention that nominated him… 

“Greeley turned out to be right. Taylor was the last Whig president. His nomination had attempted to paper over the sectional tensions that would kill the party, but ultimately exacerbated them. Running a war hero mocked the Whig’s anti-war stand just as running a slaveholder failed to calm the divisive slavery issue. And, as a nonpartisan outsider, Taylor proved particularly unsuited to manage these internal party battles once elected. [Taylor won the general election with 47% of the popular vote…]

“Most dispiriting, Taylor, who made no pledges and had no principles, gave rank-and-file Whig voters nothing to champion, while alienating many of the most committed loyalists. In The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, the historian Michael Holt notes that Taylor’s victory triggered an ‘internal struggle for the soul of the Whig party’: was it more committed to seizing power or upholding principle? Underlying that debate was also a deeper question, still pressing today, about the role of fame, popularity, celebrity, in presidential campaigning—and American political leadership.” Gil Troy, Professor of History at McGill University in Politico Magazine, June 2, 2016. 

The GOP’s efforts to suppress Democratic votes with limiting rules and gerrymandering might buy them an election or two… but if the nation survives as a functioning political state – which is anything but clear – this Republican Party is done. They may be able to buy time under an archaic political system which embraces minority rule through an electoral college (there has been only one GOP popular presidential vote victory since 2000), a Senate that gives two voices for every state regardless of population and a filibuster Senate rule where a minority can stop a majority vote on most matters. A rising and dispirited younger demographic faces a racially, gender and ethnically intolerant party with no legal or moral principles as disease and climate change demand competent leadership.

I’m Peter Dekom, and time will tell whether voting Republicans will believe their eyes or their politicians… and hence whether the Republic will survive.