By Philip Bump
Staff writer
Today at 10:15 a.m. EST
One of the learned skills for traditional members of the Republican coalition in recent years has been stuffing the whims and will of Donald Trump into differently shaped packages. How many times have we seen long-standing Republican officials trying to re-form Trump’s arguments into something approximating their own positions? How often have we seen party leaders taking some Trump statement and recontextualizing it? It’s like parents trying to get their kids to eat, slathering on ketchup and picking out the onions.
This pattern has held even for the attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. What was obviously a direct outgrowth of Trump’s desire to subvert the election results has been rationalized in every direction: The claims about rampant fraud have been repackaged as the election being “rigged,” Trump’s encouragement of the day’s events have been pushed into a closet, and the scale of the riot itself has been downplayed or misrepresented.
At its heart is an obvious conflict: Trump has a lot of enthusiastic and vocal supporters, and Republicans, through Pavlovian experience, have learned that it’s better to nod along with that base while whispering qualifiers than it is to stand in the base’s way.
So we reach the recent apex: the party trying to rationalize a condemnation of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for participating in a bipartisan panel’s effort to investigate the attack for which Trump so obviously bears blame.
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At the party’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City, it will consider a resolution rebuking Cheney and Kinzinger for their participation on the House select committee. The document, obtained by The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, essentially spends 500 words to say what could be summarized in five: “They were mean to Trump.” (Well, six: “WHEREAS they were mean to Trump.”)
But such a direct explanation of the rationale certainly wouldn’t suffice, so it’s back to that core skill of reshaping the obvious motive (retribution) into a more broadly palatable one (they hurt the party’s chances in the midterms). And to do that, the resolution engages in a bit of patter that shows how thoroughly Trumpism itself has been embedded in the party.
ADVERTISING
“WHEREAS, The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values,” the resolution begins — and immediately you see how things are going to go. I couldn’t find an actual mission statement for the party, but you can see how important “share our values” is in that statement. They can’t say “share our policy priorities,” as Cheney and Kinzinger do share those priorities. Both legislators have also demonstrated support for the Constitution in practice — and, arguably, are doing so more forcefully with their participation on the panel than their peers. So, instead, the locus of frustration simply becomes the party’s “values,” here encapsulated tersely but accurately as “Republicans slavishly love Trump.”
The next “WHEREAS” delineates how important it is for Republicans to be in power, given that Democrats and President Biden “have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism” (they have not), “eliminate border security in favor of lawless, open borders” (they have not), “create record inflation designed” — designed! — “to steal the American dream from our children and grandchildren” (no) and so on. It’s so fitting! This pastiche of look what the DEMONcrats are doing!! that would very much be at home in a Trump tweet.
This is important, the resolution argues, because winning back the majority in Congress “must be the primary goal” of the Republican conference, a goal that “requires all Republicans working together.” And yet, later in the resolution, the reality is stated: The Democrats want to investigate Jan. 6 only because they hope to “buoy the Democrat[ic] Party’s bleak prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.” So which is it? Are Democrats trying to take down Trump because they’re scrambling to win in November, or are Cheney and Kinzinger undercutting the slim chances Republicans have at their own victory?
You will perhaps not be surprised to learn how this conflict is resolved: It is not. Internal consistency is not a requirement for most political documents, much less one predicated on rationalizing a retributive action against critics of Donald Trump.
I’ll interject here to note that this resolution was developed with the robust involvement of a party official named David Bossie. Bossie is not just an official, though. He’s a hardcore Trump loyalist, a guy who has co-written several books with Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, including the sober tomes “Trump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency,” “Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency” and “Trump: America First: The President Succeeds Against All Odds.”
This resolution keeps with the theme. Eventually, its whereas-ing gets to the point.
“Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” the resolution reads, “and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes.”
Imagine writing those words. Imagine casting the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack as a “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” In an interview with Dawsey, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel pointed to a subpoena issued to someone she knew, apparently a reference to one of the people who participated in the effort to create an alternate slate of electors in Michigan. But casting the entire process as “persecution of ordinary citizens” because of this one (apparently completely valid!) subpoena is delusional.
You know who has been subpoenaed? Members of extremist groups. Misinformation conduits who tried to orchestrate events on Capitol Hill that day. The people who organized the rally at the Ellipse in concert with the administration. Members of Trump’s team who have already turned over evidence showing Trump’s indifference to the violence as it unfolded.
Some of those people who have been subpoenaed did engage in legitimate discourse, like the people who organized the Ellipse rally. But that doesn’t mean that they should not share what they know with the committee, and it certainly doesn’t mean they have been persecuted. Nor might they be considered “ordinary citizens” in this context. And, again, this does not describe most of those with whom the committee has sought to speak.
The situation here is very, very simple. Yes, Democrats think that the committee might bear political rewards — given that it might concretely show the extent to which Trump failed to intervene to prevent the day’s violence or even ways in which his allies were intertwined with the day’s most violent actors. But it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are centering politics in their approach to the probe. It is Republicans who worry first and foremost about political repercussions from what is uncovered.
Republicans want to cast the committee as illegitimate and criticism of Trump as anathema for one consistent reason: They are primarily worried about appeasing the Trump-enthusiastic base of their party. Everything else is fluff, scaffolding erected to create a different facade.
WHEREAS, Cheney and Kinzinger chose to amplify rather than muffle questions about Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack; and
WHEREAS, that is both embarrassing for the rest of the party and at odds with what the loudest voices in right-wing media are saying,
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that we are mad at them.
Much easier.
Staff writer
Today at 10:15 a.m. EST
One of the learned skills for traditional members of the Republican coalition in recent years has been stuffing the whims and will of Donald Trump into differently shaped packages. How many times have we seen long-standing Republican officials trying to re-form Trump’s arguments into something approximating their own positions? How often have we seen party leaders taking some Trump statement and recontextualizing it? It’s like parents trying to get their kids to eat, slathering on ketchup and picking out the onions.
This pattern has held even for the attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. What was obviously a direct outgrowth of Trump’s desire to subvert the election results has been rationalized in every direction: The claims about rampant fraud have been repackaged as the election being “rigged,” Trump’s encouragement of the day’s events have been pushed into a closet, and the scale of the riot itself has been downplayed or misrepresented.
At its heart is an obvious conflict: Trump has a lot of enthusiastic and vocal supporters, and Republicans, through Pavlovian experience, have learned that it’s better to nod along with that base while whispering qualifiers than it is to stand in the base’s way.
So we reach the recent apex: the party trying to rationalize a condemnation of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for participating in a bipartisan panel’s effort to investigate the attack for which Trump so obviously bears blame.
Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip Bump
At the party’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City, it will consider a resolution rebuking Cheney and Kinzinger for their participation on the House select committee. The document, obtained by The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, essentially spends 500 words to say what could be summarized in five: “They were mean to Trump.” (Well, six: “WHEREAS they were mean to Trump.”)
But such a direct explanation of the rationale certainly wouldn’t suffice, so it’s back to that core skill of reshaping the obvious motive (retribution) into a more broadly palatable one (they hurt the party’s chances in the midterms). And to do that, the resolution engages in a bit of patter that shows how thoroughly Trumpism itself has been embedded in the party.
ADVERTISING
“WHEREAS, The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values,” the resolution begins — and immediately you see how things are going to go. I couldn’t find an actual mission statement for the party, but you can see how important “share our values” is in that statement. They can’t say “share our policy priorities,” as Cheney and Kinzinger do share those priorities. Both legislators have also demonstrated support for the Constitution in practice — and, arguably, are doing so more forcefully with their participation on the panel than their peers. So, instead, the locus of frustration simply becomes the party’s “values,” here encapsulated tersely but accurately as “Republicans slavishly love Trump.”
The next “WHEREAS” delineates how important it is for Republicans to be in power, given that Democrats and President Biden “have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism” (they have not), “eliminate border security in favor of lawless, open borders” (they have not), “create record inflation designed” — designed! — “to steal the American dream from our children and grandchildren” (no) and so on. It’s so fitting! This pastiche of look what the DEMONcrats are doing!! that would very much be at home in a Trump tweet.
This is important, the resolution argues, because winning back the majority in Congress “must be the primary goal” of the Republican conference, a goal that “requires all Republicans working together.” And yet, later in the resolution, the reality is stated: The Democrats want to investigate Jan. 6 only because they hope to “buoy the Democrat[ic] Party’s bleak prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.” So which is it? Are Democrats trying to take down Trump because they’re scrambling to win in November, or are Cheney and Kinzinger undercutting the slim chances Republicans have at their own victory?
You will perhaps not be surprised to learn how this conflict is resolved: It is not. Internal consistency is not a requirement for most political documents, much less one predicated on rationalizing a retributive action against critics of Donald Trump.
I’ll interject here to note that this resolution was developed with the robust involvement of a party official named David Bossie. Bossie is not just an official, though. He’s a hardcore Trump loyalist, a guy who has co-written several books with Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, including the sober tomes “Trump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency,” “Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency” and “Trump: America First: The President Succeeds Against All Odds.”
This resolution keeps with the theme. Eventually, its whereas-ing gets to the point.
“Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” the resolution reads, “and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes.”
Imagine writing those words. Imagine casting the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack as a “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” In an interview with Dawsey, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel pointed to a subpoena issued to someone she knew, apparently a reference to one of the people who participated in the effort to create an alternate slate of electors in Michigan. But casting the entire process as “persecution of ordinary citizens” because of this one (apparently completely valid!) subpoena is delusional.
You know who has been subpoenaed? Members of extremist groups. Misinformation conduits who tried to orchestrate events on Capitol Hill that day. The people who organized the rally at the Ellipse in concert with the administration. Members of Trump’s team who have already turned over evidence showing Trump’s indifference to the violence as it unfolded.
Some of those people who have been subpoenaed did engage in legitimate discourse, like the people who organized the Ellipse rally. But that doesn’t mean that they should not share what they know with the committee, and it certainly doesn’t mean they have been persecuted. Nor might they be considered “ordinary citizens” in this context. And, again, this does not describe most of those with whom the committee has sought to speak.
The situation here is very, very simple. Yes, Democrats think that the committee might bear political rewards — given that it might concretely show the extent to which Trump failed to intervene to prevent the day’s violence or even ways in which his allies were intertwined with the day’s most violent actors. But it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are centering politics in their approach to the probe. It is Republicans who worry first and foremost about political repercussions from what is uncovered.
Republicans want to cast the committee as illegitimate and criticism of Trump as anathema for one consistent reason: They are primarily worried about appeasing the Trump-enthusiastic base of their party. Everything else is fluff, scaffolding erected to create a different facade.
WHEREAS, Cheney and Kinzinger chose to amplify rather than muffle questions about Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack; and
WHEREAS, that is both embarrassing for the rest of the party and at odds with what the loudest voices in right-wing media are saying,
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that we are mad at them.
Much easier.
