By Jennifer Rubin
Columnist |
Today at 7:45 a.m. EST
Republicans have resorted to a variety of excuses and lies to avoid breaking with the defeated former president: He didn’t mean to incite the violent insurgents on Jan. 6, 2021. He eventually asked for them to go home. It wasn’t that violent.
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Like the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, none of these hold up to the least bit of scrutiny. (The defeated president refused to say anything to the insurgents for 187 minutes, then expressed love for them. The violent images refute the lie that it was a nonviolent protest.) Moreover, the former president insists on hugging the violent insurgents — and insists the Republican Party hug him.
Opinion: The Jan. 6 mob surged at me. Then the trauma rushed in.
At yet another unhinged rally appearance on Saturday, he declared, “If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.” Even more incoherently, he insisted, “What that ‘unselect’ committee is doing and what the people are doing that are running those prisons, it’s a disgrace.”
This reaffirms a disturbing and incontrovertible fact that Republicans refuse to address: They stand by and may well nominate someone who sided and still sides with violent seditionists bent on overthrowing the duly elected government of the United States.
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In vernacular, former president Donald Trump is a traitor, someone who betrayed our Constitution. And still the GOP cannot bring itself to part with him. Even so-called moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) cannot rule out supporting him in 2024. (Recall she was convinced he had learned his lesson in deciding to vote to acquit him in the first impeachment trial.)
All of this underscores the moral and intellectual depravity that has gripped the Republican Party. When a Republican governor such as Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has the temerity to suggest, “I do not believe Trump is the one to lead our party and our country again, as president,” this is taken as a sign of moral courage. And when Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire tells CNN’s Dana Bash that “Oh my goodness, no” we shouldn’t pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, we are reminded that the vast majority of elected Republicans still play down the uprising, objected to a bipartisan commission to investigate and would not dream of suggesting Trump be prosecuted.
Figures such as the sniveling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) beg forgiveness when the right-wing media objects to his correct characterization of Jan. 6 as a “violent terrorist attack,” but that’s hardly less objectionable than vows from average Republicans who say they will support the instigator of the attack should he again run for president.
It seems elementary, but each and every Republican on the ballot needs to decide if they stand with Trump and the violent insurgents or with the United States and its Constitution. The two are mutually exclusive.
Whether it is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who falsely claims the insurgents were not violent — or Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who got her position in Republican House leadership by virtue of her willingness to repeat the “big lie” — Republicans up and down the ballot continue to side with Trump.
And the media continues to treat this as politics as normal, to interrogate President Biden as to why he has not cultivated more Republican support for his agenda (maybe because the Republicans have lost their grip on reality and now operate in bad faith?) and to allow Republicans in one interview after another to escape the fundamental question: Do you side with the insurrectionists and their leader or with our democracy?
Democrats would be well advised to start making Republican disloyalty to the Constitution an issue, taking a page from the playbook of groups such as the Republican Accountability Project — made up of conservatives pushing back against the “big lie” narrative and attempting to call Trump supporters to account. The group has begun to run ads such as this one in Arizona, against the MAGA candidate for governor Kari Lake:
It need not be the only issue Democrats raise in this year’s elections, but it certainly should be front and center. After Trump put out a statement insisting that Mike Pence, then the vice president, “could have overturned the election” (thereby conceding that he indeed had lost the election), Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) tweeted: “This is an admission, and a massively un-American statement. It is time for every Republican leader to pick a side… Trump or the Constitution, there is no middle on defending our nation anymore.” It’s hard to quibble with that.
We have one party that not merely refuses to break with the former defeated president but also refuses to break with the notion that the violent insurgents seeking to overthrow the election were the true patriots. If that’s not disqualification for holding office, I’m not sure what is.
Columnist |
Today at 7:45 a.m. EST
Republicans have resorted to a variety of excuses and lies to avoid breaking with the defeated former president: He didn’t mean to incite the violent insurgents on Jan. 6, 2021. He eventually asked for them to go home. It wasn’t that violent.
Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.
Like the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, none of these hold up to the least bit of scrutiny. (The defeated president refused to say anything to the insurgents for 187 minutes, then expressed love for them. The violent images refute the lie that it was a nonviolent protest.) Moreover, the former president insists on hugging the violent insurgents — and insists the Republican Party hug him.
Opinion: The Jan. 6 mob surged at me. Then the trauma rushed in.
At yet another unhinged rally appearance on Saturday, he declared, “If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.” Even more incoherently, he insisted, “What that ‘unselect’ committee is doing and what the people are doing that are running those prisons, it’s a disgrace.”
This reaffirms a disturbing and incontrovertible fact that Republicans refuse to address: They stand by and may well nominate someone who sided and still sides with violent seditionists bent on overthrowing the duly elected government of the United States.
Follow Jennifer Rubin‘s opinionsFollow
In vernacular, former president Donald Trump is a traitor, someone who betrayed our Constitution. And still the GOP cannot bring itself to part with him. Even so-called moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) cannot rule out supporting him in 2024. (Recall she was convinced he had learned his lesson in deciding to vote to acquit him in the first impeachment trial.)
All of this underscores the moral and intellectual depravity that has gripped the Republican Party. When a Republican governor such as Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has the temerity to suggest, “I do not believe Trump is the one to lead our party and our country again, as president,” this is taken as a sign of moral courage. And when Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire tells CNN’s Dana Bash that “Oh my goodness, no” we shouldn’t pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, we are reminded that the vast majority of elected Republicans still play down the uprising, objected to a bipartisan commission to investigate and would not dream of suggesting Trump be prosecuted.
Figures such as the sniveling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) beg forgiveness when the right-wing media objects to his correct characterization of Jan. 6 as a “violent terrorist attack,” but that’s hardly less objectionable than vows from average Republicans who say they will support the instigator of the attack should he again run for president.
It seems elementary, but each and every Republican on the ballot needs to decide if they stand with Trump and the violent insurgents or with the United States and its Constitution. The two are mutually exclusive.
Whether it is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who falsely claims the insurgents were not violent — or Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who got her position in Republican House leadership by virtue of her willingness to repeat the “big lie” — Republicans up and down the ballot continue to side with Trump.
And the media continues to treat this as politics as normal, to interrogate President Biden as to why he has not cultivated more Republican support for his agenda (maybe because the Republicans have lost their grip on reality and now operate in bad faith?) and to allow Republicans in one interview after another to escape the fundamental question: Do you side with the insurrectionists and their leader or with our democracy?
Democrats would be well advised to start making Republican disloyalty to the Constitution an issue, taking a page from the playbook of groups such as the Republican Accountability Project — made up of conservatives pushing back against the “big lie” narrative and attempting to call Trump supporters to account. The group has begun to run ads such as this one in Arizona, against the MAGA candidate for governor Kari Lake:
It need not be the only issue Democrats raise in this year’s elections, but it certainly should be front and center. After Trump put out a statement insisting that Mike Pence, then the vice president, “could have overturned the election” (thereby conceding that he indeed had lost the election), Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) tweeted: “This is an admission, and a massively un-American statement. It is time for every Republican leader to pick a side… Trump or the Constitution, there is no middle on defending our nation anymore.” It’s hard to quibble with that.
We have one party that not merely refuses to break with the former defeated president but also refuses to break with the notion that the violent insurgents seeking to overthrow the election were the true patriots. If that’s not disqualification for holding office, I’m not sure what is.
