Historian
Professor, Boston College
Professor Heather Cox Richardson writes in “Letters From An American” (01-02-20):
. . . .
It seems clear that, with no chance of proving this election fraudulent, Trump is now trying to incite violence. Nonetheless, Republicans who are jockeying for the 2024 presidential nomination want to make sure they can pick up Trump’s voters. While McConnell doesn’t want Senators to have to declare their support either way, those vying to lead the party want to differentiate themselves from the pack.
On Wednesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced he would join the efforts of his House colleagues to challenge Biden electors from Pennsylvania and perhaps other states. This will not affect the outcome of the election, but it will force senators to go on record for or against Trump. In a statement, Hawley listed Trump talking points: the influence of “mega corporations” on behalf of Biden and “voter fraud.” Hawley seems pretty clearly to be angling for a leg up in 2024.
On Wednesday night, Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) made his own play for the future of the Republican Party. He refuted point by point the idea that Trump won. He scolded his colleagues who are signing on to Trump’s attempt to steal the election, calling them “institutional arsonists.”
“When we talk in private, I haven’t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent – not one,” he wrote on Facebook. “Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will “look” to President Trump’s most ardent supporters.” They think they can “tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage,” he wrote, but they’re wrong. “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.”
Today, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, launched his own bid to redefine the Republican Party with an attack on Trump’s apparent botching of the coronavirus vaccine rollout. In a press release, Romney noted “[t]hat comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”
But he didn’t stop there. Romney went on to say that he was no expert on vaccine distribution, “[b]ut I know that when something isn’t working, you need to acknowledge reality and develop a plan—particularly when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.” He offered ideas of his own, offering them “not as the answer but as an example of the kind of options that ought to be brainstormed in Washington and in every state.” After listing his ideas, he concluded: “Public health professionals will easily point out the errors in this plan—so they should develop better alternatives based on experience, modeling and trial.”
Romney’s statement was about more than vaccine distribution. With its emphasis on listening to experts and experimenting, it was an attack on the rigid ideology that has taken over the Republican Party. Romney has said he comes to his position from his own experience, not his reading, but he is reaching back to the origins of conservative thought, when Irish statesman Edmund Burke critiqued the French Revolution as a dangerous attempt to build a government according to an ideology, rather than reality. Burke predicted that such an attempt would inevitably result in politicians trying to force society to conform to their ideology. When it did not, they would turn to tyranny and violence.
Sasse’s point-by-point refutation of Trump’s arguments– complete with citations—and Romney’s call to govern according to reality rather than ideology are suggestive. They seem to show an attempt to recall the Republican Party to the true conservatism it abandoned a generation ago.
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Get today’s “full Letter” and all th others here: https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxtkE1uhDAMhU8zWSLnB8gssuhmFr0ECokHokJCE9MpPX0zw6pSJcuWbD89fc9Zwinlw2ypEHu2gY4NTcRHWZAIM9sL5iF403INoCXzRnmuW81CGe4ZcbVhMZR3ZNs-LsFZCik-BQJaKdls9KgtR9dKjnDXnVMd3r0CUFLzdhz709buPmB0aPAL85EissXMRFu5yLeLuNWa0dKM2aXvHNxssy8pNmUfC1n30bi01h8Wqq3gwEFAL5SEhjcPyQ-e1efPelGwTuKPhmXzjjGGOBUu6t2m5bWuLEOd6x4DHQNGOy7oT0w6w3qBDxNGzDVEP1gyvINr2wvRg9L8xKo5SOiE6K6SVV-fqiqa_1B-AX8mhyo
Much as the idea appeals to me, and much as I admire Professor Richardson, it seems like an noble, yet unrealistic, hope rather than a slice of reality. As noted by Professor Richardson, the current GOP abandoned any real values at least a decade ago. They now rely on the “anti-democracy right” to keep them in business as a party that wields political strength out of proportion to the minority of voters it represents.
I find it perversely amusing, yet fundamentally disturbing, to have heard a Trump voter on TV recently claim to have “voted for the GOP platform” not the man in the last election. She was woefully ignorant of the fact that the GOP had no platform in 2020 other than “whatever Trump says.”
The history of those in the GOP who have been openly critical of Trump and his cult supporters is that they generally either 1) fall into line behind Moscow Mitch and Trump on most issues (e.g., Romney, Collins, et al.) or 2) head for the hills (e.g., Flake, Corker). Unlike the Dems, where spirited opposition is always threatening to rock the boat, true opposition and public dialogue are nearly non-existent in today’s GOP.
Nor does the lack of GOP soul searching and public recognition of Trump’s toxic, highly dishonest, and fundamentally anti-American “non-leadership” and responsibility for his own defeat, as well as the disastrous course his “maliciously incompetent non-leadership” has set for America, lead me to believe that the GOP will head in a “new direction” any time in the foreseeable future.
For example, as I’m writing this Cruz and ten other corrupt GOP “Senators” (or “Senators-elect”) are openly spreading lies and preaching sedition 🏴☠️ in the U.S. Senate.
That shows where the anti-American “Party of Putin and White Nationalist Extremists” ☠️🤮🤥 is headed these days. They might be the minority in their party, but you can bet that they won’t suffer any censure, much criticism, or real consequences from the rest of the GOP for essentially fomenting treason and seeking to undermine the credibility of an election fairly and overwhelmingly won by Biden and Harris.
The real hope for America’s survival is that under Biden and Harris, the Dems can finally figure our how to turn their numerical advantage in the general elections into actual political power to govern. Remains to be seen. Certainly hasn’t happened to date! That’s why we’re in this position, with Dems having won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections, but held the Presidency after only five of those seven elections.
While I agree with some of what Romney says these days, he is somewhat unique in the GOP. He is one of the few GOP Senators with sufficient independent standing in his home state to be largely immune to criticism and attacks by Trump and his cronies.
Based on their overwhelming refusal over the past four years to put our national interests above Trump’s personal agenda, I (unfortunately) think that a “loyal opposition” springing from today’s GOP is more of a “Dem pipe dream” than a realistic possibility.
PWS
01-02-20