Talking Points Memo (TPM) took advantage of access to the texts and messages of then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (R), the former Congressman from North Carolina, that he sent and received during and after the January 6th insurrection, to analyze and publish some of them. Of particular interest to just about every one was this:
One message identified as coming from Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to Meadows on January 17, 2021, three days before Joe Biden was set to take office, is a raw distillation of the various themes in the congressional correspondence. In the text, despite a typo, Norman seemed to be proposing a dramatic last ditch plan: having Trump impose martial law during his final hours in office.
Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!
For me, there’s insight in the phrasing. This is not a malevolent entity looking to take control of the government despite the election going against him.
No, this Rep really does think the election has been stolen. The mindset is not clear, but it’s clearly congruent with the worries of Senator Goldwater (R-AZ) of the 1960s: a man convinced that God has promised them the election would, of course, worry that cheating by the corporation providing the ballot counting systems might steal away an election. It’s more than a little shallow-minded, but it makes a lot of sense.
It’s also more than congruent with a politician who has foolishly bought into the Republican propaganda concerning the Democrats. One is tempted to ask him if he thinks Democrats are spending evenings in their comfy chairs, smoking jackets holding in their stomachs as they suck on the marrow of dead babies. He’d probably say he hadn’t thought of the smoking jackets, but it seemed likely.
Any way this goes, it’s the sort of mindset of someone who’s given in to the idea that a political adversary is, in fact, an enemy. This is a toxic fraction of our national bloodstream, and Rep Norman should probably simply resign and go back to whatever it was he was doing before he became a politician, because this sort of mindset is simply not appropriate, left or right, in a politician.
At least, without evidence.
