THE TOURISTS ARE COMING

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

As expected, Liz Cheney, the Republican Conference Chair and third ranking Republican in the House was ousted last week. She was the consummate conservative, with a voting record of 94% in support of Trump’s legislation. Her crimes: refusing to voice Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 was stolen from the former president, a lie which has been laughed out of every court and election authority for not having a shred of evidence. And for refusing to parrot the current and ongoing Republican deception, that the January 6 insurrection, the storming of the Capitol by white supremacist terrorists trying to overturn the legality of one of the fairest elections in history, was just a peaceful protest. And, in any event, Trump played no role in this protest.

The Republican Party has replaced Ms. Cheney with New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, once considered a liberal, the most contemptible epithet in the Republican vocabulary. Stefanik voted with Trump on just 78% of his legislation. But she had that immaculate qualification – she is a Trump acolyte who pretends to believe in the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The Big Lie, the continuing outrageous lies and imminent legal actions against Trump have not affected his current leadership of the Party. But they have placed the Republican voter in a Catch 22 situation. Or should I say a Catch 2022 situation?

They feel they cannot win the 2022 midterms without Trump. Although they lost the House in 2018, and the Senate and the Presidency in 2020 under Trump, he is still the undisputed leader of the Party, who calls all the shots.

But they may be beginning to understand that they cannot win the midterms with Trump, with his numerous crimes and his lies finally coming home to roost, especially if there is a bipartisan commission established to investigate the January 6 insurrection.

The first step towards creating such a commission has been completed. The House voted, 252 to 175, to convene such a commission last Wednesday, with 35 Republicans breaking ranks. A vote in the Senate will follow, and though several Republican Senators have stated that they will support the bill, there may not be enough support for 10 Senators to break ranks to achieve the 60/40 majority required to overcome a filibuster.

House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy opposed the bill. Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell stated that he will vote against the bill in the Senate, and presumably use his commanding influence to persuade Republican senators to toe the Trump line, and block the investigation. It should be recalled that McConnell made an impassioned speech to the Senate, a few days after the insurrection that Donald Trump “was practically and morally responsible for provoking the Capitol insurrection” and there should be “a painstaking investigation” on the events of the day.

As Andy Warhol famously said, “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself”. McConnell’s Republicans will only make changes as ordered by Trump, the passage of time plays no part in the shaping of their decisions.

Kevin McCarthy faces a major problem if the proposed commission is convened. He was the only person heard talking to Trump during the attacks, in the presence of many congressmen. He was pleading with Trump to send the National Guard immediately, that the rioters were his supporters, and only he could stop them. The call developed into an expletive filled shouting match, when Trump explained his refusal to call off the rioters and his delay in calling the troops, with this damning statement: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people (the rioters) are more upset about the election than you are”. At that point, a furious McCarthy told Trump that the mob was breaking into his office through the windows, and asked Trump, “Who the f… do you think you are talking to?” Six days after the insurrection, he said, in an address to Congress, that Trump bore full responsibility for the violence.

Then he went to Mar a Lago, and McCarthy’s views took a miraculous U turn. He kissed the ring and made up with Trump, with his personal judgment that the Fuhrer’s support will be necessary for him to achieve his next political goal: to be the Speaker when the Republican Party wins a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.

Such a proposed commission will have subpoena powers, and McCarthy will have to give evidence, under oath, on his role during the insurrection. His conversation with Trump during the attacks, and his subsequent behavior could be the final nail on his credibility and his political career. The statement referred to above, that Trump delayed calling the National Guard because they (the rioters) were “more upset about the election than you are” is evidence of Trump’s complicity/leadership in the insurrection.

Four months after the worst attack against the United States, carried out by a mob of white supremacist terrorists, the Republicans are carving yet another deception: minimizing the ferocity of the violence of the insurrection, describing it as a peaceful protest, a walk in the park.

Statements made by some Republican politicians are worth quoting, if only for their absurdity and to show how low Republicans can go, in the face of everything we have seen and heard. Statements they know are provable lies.

Rep. Andrew Clyde, Georgia: “Let me be clear: There was no insurrection, and to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bold-faced lie. Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion standing between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn’t know that the TV footage was a video from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit”.

For the record, there is TV footage of Clyde working with the Police to barricade the entrance in a desperate effort to keep the rioters from breaching the Capitol.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson claimed that the crowd was “positive and festive” and that many of those who attended were “families with small children”. In a later interview, Johnson defended the rioters as “people who love this country”.

Rep. Ralph Normans, South Carolina said, “when I see the media saying miles of Trump supporters reached the steps, I don’t know who did the poll to say that they were Trump supporters”. The MAGA caps, the TRUMP T-shirts and flags, the Nazi Swastikas and Confederate flags should have provided him with pretty convincing evidence as to the identity of the rioters, without the benefit of a poll.

The TV footage we all saw, repeated hundreds of times, showed mobs of angry white supremacist Trump supporters overwhelming the US Capitol Police and breaking windows to breach the building. Once inside, they vandalized the offices in the building, including Speaker Pelosi’s office, all the while screaming “Hang Mike Pence” and “Where’s Nancy”. These “innocent patriots” had already constructed a gallows, complete with hangman’s noose, in the grounds of the Capitol. This peaceful protest, this walk in the park by families of tourists, claimed six lives, left hundreds wounded and thousands, maybe millions of dollars of damage to one of the most historic and beautiful buildings in the country, the seat of America’s democracy.

Republican devotion to a defeated and disgraced former president, whose crimes are slowly but surely unraveling and reaching the next inevitable phase. Trump’s lawyers will be defending him in a number of indictments very soon. Will Republican politicians continue their support of an indicted crook, sexual predator and traitor, with the delusion that disloyalty to such a man may cost them their jobs at the 2022 midterms?

I will end with the Catch 22 conundrum faced by Republican voters today.

They may feel they cannot win the 2022 midterms, and even the 2024 presidential election without Trump, in spite of all his failures. After all, he is the undisputed leader of the Party, who still calls all the shots.

But I do feel that the momentum for responsible conservatives like Rep. Liz Cheney and Senator Mitt Romney, Rep Adam Kinzinger and Governor Larry Hogan, in their bid to rid the Party of the disease of Trumpism and return to the standards of the Party of Lincoln, is gathering. The 35 Republicans who voted with the Democrats to create a January 6 commission represent a small but significant chink in the Trumpian armor. Trump’s past is catching up with him, fast. Republicans are beginning to suspect that, in reality, they can only lose the midterms with Trump, as they lost all three elections, House, Senate and the White House during his presidency, with him.

Rational Republicans may also be coming to the realization that they are grossly overestimating the power of a defeated and disgraced president.

The decision of the Republican voters will determine if the Republican Party is going to descend into an anti-democracy Cult, under the perennial rule of a dictatorial criminal dynasty. Or return to a Party of civilized, principled, conservative politics. The stakes could not be higher for the future of the Party of Lincoln.