Schwab: Lacking any defense, GOP relied on its belief in lies
Published 1:30 am Saturday, February 20, 2021
By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist
“Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up sit down, fight fight fight.” According to Trump’s impeachment trial lawyers, we who’ve chanted it are as guilty as Trump. (tinyurl.com/fightxthree)
Coherent arguments weren’t required. Though Trump’s guilt was as obvious as shattered glass, they knew acquittal was assured. So they lied, whataboutized, Trumpified. Their audience was Trumpists and Trump, figuring, one assumes, that if they didn’t do it his way they’d be joining the fraternity of stiffed contractors. No-lose for them, it was much-lost for the country. (tinyurl.com/morlies4u)
We needn’t recount the evidence or praise the persuasive House managers, as compared to Trump’s overmatched team. Everyone understands that without Trump’s months-long crescendo of incendiary election lies, the insurrection wouldn’t have happened. It’s worth noting, however, that most Republicans who voted to acquit had joined Trump in perpetuating the big lie that led to the murderous violence. To affirm his guilt would be to admit their own. In a courtroom, those senators would have been preemptively rejected as jurors.
Likewise, if courtroom jurors colluded with defense lawyers, as did Sens. Graham, Cruz and Lee, they’d be held in contempt. Which is exactly what they displayed: intentional, smug indifference, as they and others sat, desk-footed, reading magazines, dumb-phoning, ho-humming their oaths and the Constitution. They’d welded their minds shut five years earlier, when they locked in with a dishonest, amoral “businessman” nominee.
Several Congressional Republicans who gave Trump a pass for provoking a bloody insurrection with countless lies, had voted to impeach and/or convict President Clinton for a harmless one. Protecting the future of democracy and, for that matter, their own party, required finding 17 honest Republicans. Like finding rock candy in a window-well. (Tried, failed, age seven.)
The vote, 57-43, is a historically bipartisan vote for conviction. Senators who did so represent 76 million more Americans than those who let him off. So we ask: Do Trump’s treacherous lies about fraud, attempting to discredit fair elections forever, really exemplify what’s left of conservatism in his party? Do his tweets and inaction during the depravity, failing his duty, inflaming the rioters, tossing Pence to his mob like paper towels in Puerto Rico, abandoning everyone in the Capitol but the insurrectionists, constitute the Republican presidential ideal? Guess so. Seventy-fivepercent still want him, a sedition-provoking sociopath, as their leader. (tinyurl.com/novoice4u)
Are there no future Republican stars as admirable as the Democratic House managers? Will Trump’s successor be the fisting Josh Hawley? Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham? Marjorie Tantric Greene? Matt Gaetz? Evidently. Cowed by Trump’s deluded, angry cultists, Republicans must, for a very long time, provide only such mendacious embarrassments as those. One after another, state parties are censuring members who voted against Trump. (Cancel culture!) Said a Pennsylvania GOP chairman, of Sen. Toomey, “We did not send him there to do the right thing.” Integrity and conservatism: officially ostracized. We who long for two honorable parties find it dispiriting. (tinyurl.com/GOPnoMORE)
After voting for absolution, McConnell excoriated Trump with words that could have been the prosecutors’, calling his behavior leading to and during the riot unprecedented dereliction of presidential duty, for which he’s fully culpable. Avouching every prosecutorial argument, he then justified voting “not guilty” with the refuted, outvoted claim that it’s unconstitutional to impeach a non-sitting president; not mentioning it was he who prevented a timely trial. We sometime-hypocrites tip our hats, shirts, pants, socks and shoes to the greatest of all time.
As real conservatives repudiate the party, Republicans are increasingly defined by their worst, like those who still believe, or claim, the election was stolen; who say the Capitol riot was “staged,” a hoax, antifa. Sen. Rand Paul, who just called senators who wear masks “science deniers.” Thus we understand unwavering support for Trump: asininity. And oleaginous, Grahamic cowardice. (tinyurl.com/stagedhoax)
What else can it be? Trump’s biggest accomplishment was maintaining the Obama recovery for three-fourths of a quadrennial. His response to covid-19 was, using his favorite word, a disgrace. Denial, lies, multi-level mismanagement. Silencing scientists, mocking the measures needed to slow the spread. Finally, giving up. He got manhandled by China, Russia and North Korea; increased the risk of a nuclear Iran; made the U.S. pitied, and the only country in the world not taking climate change seriously. Any Republican would produce tax cuts and deregulation. (And deficits.) Even after his hand-crafted insurrection, though, Trumpidolatry remains.
Finding him guiltless, those non-conservative senators and their no-longer-conservative party announced, in effect, “Trump is the best we’ve got. The Republican party commits to the uninformed, conspiracy-believing, anti-democracy, white-supremacist, insurrectionist mob we spent decades creating. Come, join us.”
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
