THE GOP BUSINESS VS SOUL
February 9, 2021 is the day the GOP begins to really search within its soul to determine if it remains the “Party of Truth” as Liz Cheney has stated, or the Party of Trump. Anyone that does not believe the accounts of January 6; after watching the video re-runs showing a crazed mob, egged on by the former president and his supporters, storming the U.S. Capitol to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, really lives on the Trump planet. That members of Congress are trying to downplay the attempt to destroy the central principle of our democracy — fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power — is appalling. What is really going on with the GOP ranks, and who will have the spine to speak to their conscience?
The impeachment trial brings into public view the fight for control of the Republican Party. Business Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have run the Republican Party since the 1980s. They cultivated the populists for their votes, but business Republicans never intended to give them power. Business Republicans only cozied up to the Trumpers because they need their votes. They did not want to alienate either Trump voters or anti-Trump voters, and they need to raise money. Former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was on the plane soon after Trump departed Washington, D.C., for his residence in Mar-a-Lago, to kiss the ring and obtain Trump’s donor list.
The Republican Party is in dire straits. For congressmen to keep impeachment blindfolds that the former President incited the insurrectionists and caused a tsunami of lies concerning election fraud, goes against the core of what the Constitution stands for, and their oath they took to uphold it. The motion proposed by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), calling for a debate over the constitutionality of trying a former president, shows complete disregard. Paul obviously is not a pundit or scholar of the Constitution. He and others in the Senate do not have the courage to accept the trial for what it is, the conviction of an impeached President who ignored the oath he took “to faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will do to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Robert Grenier noted this week in the New York Times that the United States is facing a violent insurgency and should apply the lessons we have learned about counterinsurgency to head off political violence. Grenier notes that the nation must insist on criminal justice, tracking and trying those responsible for crimes. We must also return the nation to a fact-based debate about issues. The impeachment managers opened day one with compelling fact-based truths with the videos of that horrendous breach of our democracy. Article II of the Constitution establishes the accountability of the President. This is done through the impeachment process. It is time for this measure to be enacted for the soul of the Republican Party — if not, there will no longer be two strong political parties, there will be one plus a fractured second. We will soon see if money is more important than the soul.
Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz demonstrate such “patriotism” for the Constitution and disregard of the Capitol insurrection, at Former President Trump’s second impeach trial. The voice of this nation will be at the ballot box and your re-election not likely.
