There have been multiple reports in the media of defections from the Republican Party in the wake of the January 6th Insurrection, but there’s nothing like a graph to bring important developments to the fore.
This is reinforced by editorials such as this from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
The Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump should be an opportunity for Missouri Sens. Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley to redeem themselves for blindly supporting a man whose conduct was indefensible. Instead, they continue bringing additional embarrassment to the state after having flirted with the abolition of democracy in favor of keeping a dictator wannabe in the White House.
Hawley, of course, is the Senate’s biggest cheerleader when it comes to asserting that Trump won the Nov. 3 election and that Trump shouldn’t be held accountable for directing a mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. Blunt had the gall to tell reporters that, until a 13-minute video of the Capitol attack was shown to senators on Tuesday, he had never taken so much time to watch what occurred on that “truly a horrendous day.” Both voted against allowing the trial to proceed.
Missourians must not allow themselves to be fooled by the weak boilerplate defenses by Hawley and Blunt. Hawley tweeted on Tuesday: “Today Democrats launched their unconstitutional impeachment trial while President Biden cancels thousands of working class jobs across this country. Americans deserve better.” In fact, a bipartisan majority of senators have deemed the proceeding to be constitutional. And the attempt to divert attention to Biden, who has not canceled a single job, is pathetic but oh-so-typical of Hawley.
These are symptoms of the clash of morality systems. In one corner we have the morality of democracies, wherein we build our secular morality around truth, justice, and a vote per person. The rest is negotiable and contingent on how reality works out.
The other? It’s a quasi-religious authoritarianism, a semi-redundancy seeing as the Divine is rarely elected, and its representatives only somewhat more so. Not that I’m condemning religion in general, but only certain sects that have succumbed to the lure of worldly wealth, power, and prestige, and have melded the opposition to democratic (small-d) pillars inherent in their religions to their view of how the world should be run, despite, in the dominant case, admonitions in their theological texts against application of those very principles to worldly matters.
This is not a matter of utter clarity. The general voter, not particularly interested in the shades of gray, sausage grinder that is politics, may not recognize where the Republican Party has been headed. Indeed, outside of a few precocious members and ex-members, the Party itself didn’t realize that its toxic chemistry of fall-into-line and amateurism would lead to a Party that brays for an autocratic outcome, all in the name of, well, winning. Winning in the name of the Divine. Which leads to the consequence that Any behavior is acceptable in the Name of the Divine.
Editorials such as that of the Post-Dispatch seek to remind Senators far gone in the authoritarian morality system that the system in which they are flourishing is not the one they desire, and that to which they are aligned is not friendly to democracy. I fear such editorials will go for naught, at least so far as the Senators themselves are concerned; there may be more impact on voters, who may or may not be important in the future of the United States of America.
Why? Those Senators are so certain of their righteousness that they do not commit to ideals of democracy, but to the ideal that the Party must win. In this scenario, the desires of voters is ignored. We saw this in the pathetic lawsuit Texas v Pennsylvania.
But they fail to think ahead. Consider this description of yesterday’s Impeachment Trial proceedings from Benjamin Wittes and Tia Sewell:
Ted Lieu of California builds on this point by arguing that Trump’s behavior after the attack indicated a dangerous lack of remorse. Lieu states that “not even once” did Trump condemn the attack on the day it occurred, despite the pleas of numerous lawmakers who experienced the violence firsthand. Rather, when the president told insurrectionists to go home—three hours after the attack—he also stated “we love you” and repeated his false claims about a stolen election. Lieu claims that Trump was “eerily silent” on Jan. 7, until finally—nearly 30 hours after the attack—he released a video condemning the Capitol breach. But notably absent from this video, Lieu notes, was the instruction to never do it again. Nor has Trump shown any remorse or taken responsibility in the weeks since: The House managers show a video from Jan. 12, in which Trump states that his speech on Jan. 6 was “totally appropriate.”
DeGette describes how extremist groups were emboldened by Trump—warning that unless there is action now, “the violence is only just beginning.” According to U.S. intelligence community bulletins, she shows, there was a great increase in violent online rhetoric and credible threats following the Capitol breach. She covers the price in dollar terms to both state and federal governments associated with increased security measures following the riot and argues that constituents have also suffered from a lack of regular access to their representatives. DeGette also notes that experts who study domestic extremist violence in the U.S. have stated that the “perceived success” of Jan. 6 will foment future attacks, which pose a specific threat to racial, ethnic and religious minorities in the United States. [Lawfare]
Now what happens? I alluded to it here:
FLASH MOB: You stole your election! You stole your election!
[REPUBLICAN ELECTED] OFFICIAL: I did not!
FM: You stole your election! You stole your election!
OFFICIAL: I did not!
FM: PROVE IT, THEN! PROVE IT, THEN!
OFFICIAL: I don’t have to! You have no proof!
FM: JUST LIKE YOU DON’T ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, YOU HYPOCRITICAL, LEG HUMPING, PANTS WETTER! WE DON’T NEED ANY!
Imagine that happening for every election. And then the flash mobs are replaced by violent mobs. And then, in 2024, candidate Cruz, smoothly thinking the Republican nomination for President is in the bag, is suddenly assaulted and torn apart by Hawley’s mob.
And then Hawley is never seen in public, seized as he is by terror at the death threats issued by Cruz’s partisans.
A scenario such as this should have been described to the Senate, a reminder to Cruz and Hawley that autocracies and theocracies are extremely dangerous, not only because of ambitious politicians, but to ambitious politicians. One of the great strengths of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power, so touted from the latest November until January 6th. The riot run by the ambitious and the wretched in Trump’s thrall attempted to destroy that tenet of democracy, but it only magnified its importance to those citizens – many in number – who are happy with democracy.
And so the decline in the popularity of the Republican Party. Gallup may try to make this seem a typical part of the ups and downs of the political parties:
Sub-40% favorable ratings for the Republican Party are not unusual. The last such measure was 38% in January 2019 amid the partial federal government shutdown related to a dispute over funding for Trump’s proposed southern border wall. From 2013 through 2018, the average favorable rating for the GOP was 39%.
In contrast to those generally weak ratings, in January 2020, a slim majority of Americans viewed the Republican Party favorably while Trump was in the process of being acquitted in his first impeachment trial, and the U.S. economy was strong.
The current GOP image reading is still significantly above the party’s historical low rating of 28% from October 2013, when disputes over funding the Affordable Care Act led to a partial government shutdown. Gallup also measured a low 31% reading for the GOP in December 1998 after Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republican-led House of Representatives.
But the Insurrection of January 6th is unique in modern American history. The fact that it has not been definitively rejected by the Republican Party marks the Party’s alleged adherence to democratic ideals as suspect, and as most Americans would prefer to live in a democracy rather than a theologically seasoned autocracy, I suspect the Republican Party will continue its descent into triviality.
What could stop it?
Determined leadership by the Republican leadership. Rep McCarthy (R-CA), House Minority Leader, has already definitively failed that test, acting like a toady for Trump since the Insurrection.
But Senator McConnell (R-KY), the leader of the GOP Senators, still has an opportunity to save his Party from diminishment and extinction. He’s reportedly still undecided as to whether he’ll vote guilty or innocent.
If he votes guilty, he leads most of the other GOP Senators into voting guilty as well. By repulsing Trump at long last, he communicates to the public that the Republican Party may be open to the morality of democracy, rather than than of authoritarianism – true or not.
If he votes innocent, then the independents and the reported thousands of Republican defectors will read that as an endorsement of the Insurrection, an endorsement of fallacious election challenges, an endorsement of the unimportance of truth and facts.
And they’ll vote accordingly.
