There aren’t enough good Republicans to save the party.
Image: A Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939
We haven’t fully absorbed the significance of what happened on January 6. Yes, there were several days of news coverage. The attack has been described as historic, unprecedented, terrible, shameful and shocking. But we should not be surprised.
We should be more scared than we are. Respected, influential, political figures are giving oxygen to conspiracy theories associated with white supremacists and anti-Semitism. We are living through history repeating itself.
A little over a week ago, the mob attacking the capitol building included one person wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt. Many more had clothing or signs supporting QAnon conspiracy theories, another movement that’s embraced anti-Semitism. Others were members of Proud Boys, a white supremacist group. They were poisoned by the same conspiracy theories that have fed fascists since fascism began — a shadowy cabal of possibly Satanic probably Jewish people are secretly running the world with the help of liberals and people of color who have been duped.
Anti-Semitic and white supremacy are not new to America. And, at times, famous, respected Americans have allied themselves with the movements pushing those theories. Charles Lindbergh and his wife attended the Summer Olympics as personal guests of Hermann Goering. Before that, Henry Ford used the paper he owned to publish a series of articles on the problems of the “international Jew.” These movements have always been dangerous to the United States. But they are especially dangerous when influential political figures support them.
After Biden won the 2020 election, Newt Gingrich went on Fox News and called the election a “left-wing power grab financed by people like George Soros.” He went on to say, “I think that it is a corrupt, stolen election.” Trump picked up the message soon after. This is just one of many false stories Trump spread about problems with the 2020 election.
If Trump had been the only Republican supporting these theories, the attack on the capitol may well have been averted.
But he isn’t. The conspiracy theories surrounding the election were encouraged by complicit silence of the majority of the Republicans in the House and Senate who refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory in December 2020. In the months since, Trump’s team has produced no evidence of widespread election fraud. And still, many Republicans have repeated and amplified Trump’s baseless allegations of election fraud.
The toxic combination of complicit silence and active support means these conspiracy theories haven’t just seduced the fringe of America. The mob also included police officers, veterans, doctors, lawyers, real estate brokers, the owner of a moving company, the Hawaii GOP elect for district 22 (founder of Proud Boys of Hawaii), the co-owner of a grocery store chain, a well-known guitarist, the son of a Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge, and a two-time U.S. Olympic swimming gold medalist, to name a few. They came from all over the United States. They came because they believed “Our president want us here.”
In one of the presidential debates, Trump was asked to denounce the Proud Boys because they were a white supremacist group. Instead he told them to “stand back and stand by” because “somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.” Sit with that for a minute. The president told a violent, white supremacist group to stand by for when the time came to deal with his political enemies. In response, a handful of Republican senators denounced Trump’s words directly. Some Republicans made excuses for him. Most others refused to criticize him directly, or said nothing at all.
The Proud Boys were listening. Soon after they added the words “stand back” and “stand by” to their logo. For months, Trump and his allies have been telling crowds of enthusiastic supporters that he actually won the election. In the weeks leading up January 6, a bright red “March for Trump” bus worked its way toward Washington, D.C. At each of the more than 25 stops, Trump’s allies recruited people for the event on January 6.
We are living through history repeating itself. Respected, political figures are giving oxygen to conspiracy theories associated with white supremacists and anti-Semitism. And the vast majority of these figures are Republicans.
I’m not going to pretend that the left is immune to fringe conspiracy theories. They aren’t. But the Republicans can no longer pretend that conspiracy theories are a fringe element of their base.
Hours after the capitol building had been attacked by a mob trying to prevent Biden’s win from being recognized, 6 Republican senators and 121 Republican representatives objected to the electoral votes from Arizona. 7 Republican senators and 138 Republican representatives objected to the electoral votes from Pennsylvania. This is not a fringe element of the Republican party. This is not a one-time moral failure. Since Trump became the Republican nominee for president, Republican leadership has only found their conscience when reacting to Trump’s absolute worst offenses. And even then, their criticism has been measured. These fitful, tepid attacks of conscience were not, and are not enough to prevent fringe elements from spreading.
I watched the House impeachment hearings this week. And many of those same representatives got up to defend Trump with specious arguments and false equivalences.
Jim Jordan claimed Democrats objected to more states for the 2016 election than Republicans did for the 2020 election. The truth? 7 Democratic Representatives tried to raise objections, but because no senators signed on, the objections were never debated or considered. 0 Democratic Senators and 7 Democratic Representatives is not equivalent to 7 Republican Senators and 138 Republican Representatives. Additionally, Republican objections the electoral vote happened in the context of a concerted misinformation campaign run by the president himself. These situations are not the same.
Guy Reschenthaler quoted the one line of Trump’s speech including the word ‘peacefully’ and then argued that one line proves that Trump wasn’t inciting violence. Reschenthaler’s argument ignores the entire rest of Trump’s speech where he told the crowd Pence could change the election results (false) and repeatedly used the word ‘fight’. Reschenthaler’s argument ignores Trump’s months-long misinformation campaign, his comment to the Proud Boys, his record of joking about violence toward media at his rallies, that time he retweeted a video of someone saying “the only good democrat is a dead democrat”, that time he retweeted a video of himself punching a man with a CNN logo on his face. Oh, and there’s also that time he retweeted a video of someone shouting “white power.” Given this context, you can’t reasonably argue one instance of the word ‘peacefully’ matters.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, along with several others, argued Democratic sympathy with the Black Lives Matter movement is equivalent to supporting the same sort of violence as the attack on capital hill. This is a false, dangerous equivalence. The Black Lives Matter movement is based on justified grievances about how people of color are treated by the police and the courts. The BLM protests have been largely, though not exclusively, free from violence. The mob that attacked capital hill was motivated by the false story of a stolen election muddled with white supremacist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They came prepared for a military-style assault on a federal building. They had radios to communicate and restraints to take hostages. More importantly, the intent was to interrupt the transfer of power based on a fair election.
Several Republicans argued that impeachment was irrelevant since Trump was leaving office anyway, ignoring the obvious and widely reported fact that the Senate can vote to bar Trump from holding office in the future if Trump is convicted.
The low point was when Jim Jordan read the statement Trump released during the middle of the hearings: “I urge no violence, no law breaking or vandalism of any kind …” I won’t bother quoting the rest of it because it doesn’t matter. Trump walked back his statement about “very fine” people on both sides after Charlottesville, then reversed himself a day later. The day after the capitol attack, Trump released a video saying he wouldn’t serve a second term. The next day he undercut that message by saying he wouldn’t attend Biden’s inauguration. Trump has given us no reason to trust him. I’m tired of Republicans thinking anyone should believe anything Trump says.
On January 6, I watched a mob incited by the president attack the capitol building. They made nooses and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” I witnessed the evidence for what should be an open-and-shut case for impeachment. A few days later, I watched 197 Republicans in the House vote against impeachment. Even after Trump’s mob attacked the capitol and personally put every single person in that room at risk, only 10 Republican Representatives found the courage to do the only reasonable thing.
The Republican party doesn’t have a fringe element. The Republican party has been taken over by its fringe elements.
It pains me to write this because I don’t want it to be true. Prior to Trump’s campaign, I was not a straight ticket voter. The United States works better as a two-party democracy. But after the past couple of weeks, I have come to one conclusion.
Every single Republican who objected to the electoral votes or opposes impeachment needs to be voted out of the office. They need to lose their political power. They need to lose their donors.
The Republican party has failed at governing, and until they recognize their failures and rebuild their party, no voter should trust them.
