Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Hey GOPs - you want unity? Then give the boot to riot-enablers like Trump and RoJo

Few have understood our screwed-up timeline better than Charlie Pierce in Esquire. And he's summed up the fascist-enabling GOPs on the Hill perfectly in the fallout from last week's Capitol Riot.

The first example is Pierce's writing from yesterday in a column titled "I'm Not Listening to Any Calls for 'Unity' From the People Who Fueled This."
The gall. The sheer, unmitigated, steel-belted, gold-plated gall it takes for these people to make this argument, not a week after five people died in the worst battle in the U.S. Capitol since the Royal Marines blew town, can only be attributed to politicians who are confident that the forces of unreason and violence have their backs. And Republican conservatives have been playing footsie with those forces for decades.

In the West, you had congresscritters who spoke to armed militia groups, and far too many allegedly respectable conservatives lined up behind gun-totin’ deadbeat Cliven Bundy and his deadbeat offspring. In the South, Republican politicians genuflected before the Council of Conservative Citizens, the modern manifestation of the White Citizens Councils, which were themselves the respectable front organizations for the domestic terrorism of the Klan. Consider the sheepshanks into which Republican politicians have tied themselves defending the Confederate battle flag, the one that was paraded around the Capitol last week, and opposing the efforts to remove memorials to that previous exercise in violent sedition. This was all to keep the angry base sufficiently mollified to be used to political advantage. They grabbed the wolf by the ears and now they can't let go. All the president* did was to remove the controls and release the whirlwind. If these people are afraid for their political lives, good. They should be.

So, no, I’m not listening to calls for “unity” from these people, and I’m hoping that Democratic politicians do not give in to this subtle coercion. (“Nice Congress you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it. Again.”) I am looking for investigations, arrests, trials, and buses on their way to various federal facilities. Were I in Congress, there are a number of people I would vote to expel. And I want televised hearings with no executive sessions. We need to look at ourselves in the mirror of these most remarkable events. We need to accept what we see.
Right on. These scumbags decided to spread lies about our fairly-decided election, and has given winks and nods to racism and conspiracy theories for years because they felt it was winning politics.

It is not up to Democrats to soften their opposition to a President who encouraged a group of MAGAts to storm the Capitol and overturn the election, which resulted in 5 people dying and hundreds of members of Congress being endangered.

Instead, it is up to Republicans to say it is unacceptable for a President to act this way. And if they don't find it unacceptable, then that is a statement in itself.

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

Along the same lines, Pierce followed up today with a column that was titled: "Republicans Have Decided It's Democrats' Job to Wrestle Their Monster Back Into the Lab." In this article, Pierce lambastes the GOP "Leader" in the House, Kevin McCarthy, who voted against certifying the electoral votes of two states, continues to claim that Dems are the divisive ones because they dare to take action against Trump after the attempted coup, and is offering up the following "deal" for Speaker Pelosi.
So, in return for not prying the nuclear codes out of the grasping, tiny hands of a dangerous lunatic, McCarthy offers: 1) a toothless censure resolution, and 2) that notorious Beltway black hole, The Special Bipartisan Commission, which will be tasked to "promote confidence in future federal elections," and this in response to the bullshit "irregularities" that McCarthy and his party tried to use to overturn the election, and that were the proximate cause of the riot in the first place. Right. The country lets sedition go unpunished and, in return, we get a memo. Thanks, Kevin, but I don't need your magic beans.

This proposal is saturated with flop sweat. The Republicans are caught between the upper and nether millstones. They're trying not to get tagged with the responsibility for the riots and deaths at the Capitol while, at the same time, they're trying not to draw the ire of those who committed these crimes. (Believe this: Republican officeholders are more terrified of the crazies than Democratic politicians are.) Meanwhile, a whole brigade of American corporations is cutting off the money spigot to any Republican who enabled the violence by refusing to accept the results of the election. The supercollider doesn't accelerate fast enough to spin the Republicans out of this mess.
And there are more dominoes likely to fall after Trump is gone, as we find out more about who knew about the plot to overturn the election, who gave assistance to (or at least failed to resist) the coup attempt, and which members of Congress looked the other way.

One member of Congress that is most guilty of failing to act against the insurrection (and helping to fan the flames of the rioters through prior statements) is the Chair of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee - Wisconsin's own Ron Johnson. Johnson was all set to object to the electoral votes of certain states on 1/6, going along with every BS theory that stirred up the rioters, despite admitting last month that Joe Biden won the election. But when it became time to have his vote registered, the (mo)Ron ducked and ran. And where did RonJon get some of his "information" about election issues? Likely from a foreigner who just got sanctioned for lying.
President Donald Trump's administration slapped sanctions on seven Ukrainian officials Monday for trying to undermine President-elect Joe Biden's candidacy, including a former diplomat who met with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in 2019.

Johnson, a Republican from Oshkosh, repeatedly cited information provided by Ukrainian official Andriy Telizhenko as he tried to discredit the Democratic nominee.

Monday's sanctions against Telizhenko and others prompted Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon to say Johnson's investigation of Biden was "based on Russian disinformation."

"The Senate was used to give credibility to foreign disinformation for the sole purpose of boosting Donald Trump's campaign, and that can't happen again," Wyden said in a statement.
Many Republicans deserve to be facing inquisitions for their roles in the Capitol Chaos of last week, and the Trump Era in general. But few are more worthy of sanction and possible expulsion for their actions in this disgraceful era than Russian Ronnie Johnson.

And if you believe in democracy and fairness, you cannot unify with GOP crooks like Russian Ron. They will not play fair, and there is no depth they will plumb to obtain and hold onto power.
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