OATH OF ALLEGIANCE SWORN BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS: “I do solemnly swear, (or affirm), that I support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC…..”
There can be very little doubt that the former President Donald J. Trump instigated a violent insurrection, the purpose of which was to keep him in power after he had clearly lost an election which had elevated Joseph Biden to the Presidency. There is similarly no doubt as to the facts or intent as all of his own words and behavior are on tape. Where there is doubt is how much support and influence Trump still holds on the near seventy - five million citizens that voted for him and with the GOP elected officers in the light of his behavior following the election, specifically his role in the insurrection.
Every elected Republican official, especially those in the Senate, apparently fear for their political lives if they don’t obsequiously toe the Trump line. There is a belief not backed by the facts that citizen Trump is all powerful and that Presidential nominee wannabes must be in the front row of the cult gulping down Kool -Aid. Even if any of that was true, which it is not, they swore an oath. In addition House Minority Leader McCarthy is not only backing off his statement as to the President’s culpability in the insurrection he is failing to censure a Q.Anon supportive Republican who has argued that Nancy Pelosi should be shot in the head and Obama and Clinton should be executed. Senate Minority leader McConnell is similarly edging away from his strong condemnation of Trump. So far the Republican attacks have been reserved for Liz Cheney the third ranking GOP member of the House who has condemned POTUS 45 in no uncertain terms.
REPUBLICANS MORE CONCERNED WITH THEIR POLITICAL FUTURE THAN THE CONSTITUTION.
The dilemma elected GOP representatives face, particularly in relation to the sequel to Trump's first impeachment, is whether to continue to aid and abet his lies in the belief that politically that is the most expedient decision regardless of it being morally bankrupt. There is the specious argument that it is not constitutionally legal to have an impeachment trial after the President has left office. The latter is the most likely cop out for many of the Republican Senators who are backing the GOP to abandon democracy. Their real motive is political survival. Shame on the party of Lincoln. In addition the failure to impeach Trump will allow him to claim that that proves his innocence. In fact they are backing a sure fire loser.
Besides POTUS 45 being corrupt, cruel, a pathological liar and a malignant narcissist he demands blind loyalty to his good self rather than the Party, Country and Constitution. He does not believe the rule of law applies to him and his behavior is that of a totalitarian. Already elected office bearers are being censured and being threatened Primaries for voting for his impeachment and for not supporting the lie that he won the election. The Republican National Committee elected his nominees as co chairmen and unanimously hailed him as leader of the Party. Is that whom the Republican Party really want as its leader? By backing Trump they are accepting totalitarianism.
The hypocrisy of the Republicans, who are the self same crowd who impeached and tried Bill Clinton for a consensual sexual affair that he lied about using the rationale that the character of the President was crucial, is monumental.
TRUMP IS A BIG TIME LOSER AND HIS POSITION IS WORSENING
There is no doubt that the ex President is still the major force in the Republican Party but his support is not enough to push the Republicans over the top. What is more his influence is receding. His approval rating on January 20, 2021 dropped to just above the mid thirties having crashed ten points following the January 6, insurrection. Even among Republicans his approval rating is down fifteen percent. Only fifty - six percent of Republicans polled believe he should run again - down dramatically from a few months ago. Also the Republican Party has markedly diminished in membership over the past few years so it is fifty - six percent of those still around.
In the four years Trump has been in power, the Republicans have taken a massive hit. The House and the Senate have both reverted to the Democrats all be it with small majorities. The Democrats held fifteen Governorships in 2017 and now hold twenty - four. In the 2020 Presidential election they won five states, reclaiming three and triumphing in two red states. They increased their vote count in 2020 to eighty - one million defeating Trump by seven million being four million more than in 2016. In 2018 they flipped three hundred State legislative seats and four Attorney General positions giving them the occupancy of twenty - seven of the fifty - one State head justice officers in the country. In the 2020 elections they had hoped to add to their earlier victories but lost ground in the House.
What was most reflective as to the mood of the electorate towards Trump, two months after his defeat. The red Georgia run offs for two Senate seats that he was heavily involved in saw two losses which demanded a two hundred thousand vote reversal. His voters didn’t turn out in full and he evoked a bigger response from Democrats.
The numbers are up on on barring him from holding office again - fifty seven percent are in favor while only forty percent believe he should be allowed to hold office. Those Republicans believing that Trump had done nothing wrong from the first impeachment to the second impeachment has decreased by twenty points - fifty six percent now to thirty - six percent then.The same Monmouth poll showed an increase in Republicans that thought Biden had won fair and square, (sixty - five percent) and more significantly of the thirty - five percent that thought that there was fraud over sixty percent believed it was time to move on.
None of this squares with the Q,Anon supporter newly elected House Republican, Ms. Greene, who proclaimed, “The vast majority of Republican voters, volunteers and donors are no longer loyal to the GOP,,,,,their loyalty now lies with Donald Trump”. One just wonders what the Republicans particularly the Senators are scared of? The Minority Leader of the House has been summoned to Mar -a - Lago to see the Don, who in between playing golf, is going to decide whether to put Kevin McCarthy on his hit list. Jay H. Ell’s guess is that unless McCarthy has the goods that can put El Capo away, whatever McCarthy says, the Don in the long run, won’t forgive him. (See The Godfather Part 2).
ARIZONA - A CASE STUDY IN TRUMP’S GOP LOSING GROUND.
To see the split in live time, Arizona which has just lost a Senate seat to the Democrats and is the Republican state that Biden flipped by a fraction, is a case study in the fracturing of Trump’s GOP with supporters leaving the Party. Not only did Biden narrowly flip the state BOTH its Senate members are now in Democrat hands.
The leader of the Arizona GOP Committee is Kelli Ward a right wing die hard since way back. She lost to John McCain in the 2016 Primary by fifteen points after receiving hefty support from the Freedom former Tea Party faction. In the 2018 Senate Republican Primary she was backed by anyone who was anybody from the Trump camp including Steve Bannon, Senator Rand Paul and Fox New’s Laura Ingraham and was roundly beaten. In 2020 she may have lowered her ambitions, namely, the Chairmanship of the State GOP, but certainly not her sights on the most powerful sponsor, Donald Trump. In spite of his status she scraped home by three percent. This victory is now subject to audit. She challenged the Biden victory in Arizona in the Federal Courts but like her patron’s sixty challenges her case was thrown out.
Under her direction a motion censuring Cindy McCain, the widow of John McCain who publicly advocated voting for Biden, Jeff Flake the former Senator who is an outspoken critic, and Doug Ducey, the popular Republican Governor, who refused to reverse the Arizona election result, was passed. All three laughed it off as did the bulk of the Arizona electorate. The Arizona commercial sector acted in sync with Linkedin CEO Giuliano who claimed that, “ They all know the truth…. I can’t remember a time when there was something as serious as this that compelled commerce to speak so strongly about what was going on in a political party”.
The ultimate proof that something is seriously amiss in Arizona is that ten thousand card carrying members of the Republican Party have taken the trouble to hand them in and resign from the Party, since January 6,
THE CASE FOR TRUMP WANNABES TO ASSUME HIS MANTLE
So they are lining up to take the mantle of loser Trump. If anyone of them were to be successful they are taking on some one who let loose a mob who erected a gallows to hang his most loyal supporter Vice President Mike Pence. Cruz forgets the depths Trump sunk to in the 2016 Republican Primaries to eliminate him accusing his father of being part of the cabal that assassinated Kennedy and calling his wife a bag. Hawley is too wet by the ears to realize that Trump will eat him up alive. With regard to Rand Paul, Trump claimed that, “He shouldn’t even be on this stage”. Marco Rubio prophesied that the Republican Party would be confined to the wilderness if they elected Trump. (He was right but only four years too early).Other newer wannabe candidates such as Senators Tom Cotton and Mike Lee and Governors Abbott and De Santis will be annihilated as well.
Donald Trump has made it quite clear that he would like to run in 2024. If he does no wannabe is going to beat him. However he faces several legal challenges and may not be able to take up the mantle.This doesn’t mean that any wannabe has a chance. Trump has narrowed the field to three contenders - Ivanka, Don Jnr. and Eric.
TRUMP’S SECOND IMPEACHMENT
The writing on the wall is that there are nowhere near the seventeen Republican votes needed to convict Trump in the Senate. The consensus is that the cop out will be procedural - you cannot convict anyone who is no longer in Office which on its face is nonsense. ( A motion by Rand Paul that there should be no trial because of this was supported by forty - five of the fifty Republicans). Trump is getting away with, as he forecast, murder on Fifth Avenue, two weeks after moving to Florida. This collusion really makes these Senators accessories after the fact in this insurrection. They have not only seen the tapes they were witnesses and victims of the crime.
You have to really be spineless and candidates for profiles in cowardice to back a totalitarian seditious monster so that you won’t be primaried. Trump’s major political involvement at the moment is to seek revenge on those who didn’t vote to overturn the election results or opted for his impeachment. No one can anymore argue that he will change with the Office - he didn’t, he has just become drunk with power and ruthlessness. He rallied the mob to hunt down his most obsequious sycophantic loyal follower, Mike Pence his Vice President. The latter stood by him through thick and thin. Even when Trump childishly walked off the set while being interviewed by Leslie Stahl of Sixty Minutes, Mike Pence attempted there and then to normalize his response. His reward for five years loyalty and giving the Presidency a modicum of respectability was to sic his cult on him in such an unambiguous fashion that they erected a gallows and shouted in the inner sanctum of the First Branch of Government, “Hang Pence, Hang Pence”.
The good news, if there can be in this sordid chapter of Trumpian history, is that public opinion will play a large part in the waverers decision on deciding to convict. Every channel will have a minute by minute showing of the proceedings. It will not be a drawn out complicated affair like the last one. The Democrat House Managers are going to present a video to illustrate their case. If it is put together like the virtual Democratic National Convention and the Inaugural show it will be compelling. The audience will not be much taken in by arcane arguments that Trump is not guilty because he is in his Mar- A - Lago bunker.
Mitch McConnell should show some leadership for heavens sake. He is the de facto leader of the party. He initially committed himself to condemning Trump’s culpability so after his slimy career he could go out in a blaze of glory cause he knows what is at stake - totalitarianism versus democracy.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The Democrats are in control of all three branches in Government and Biden so far is getting increasing numbers on approval of his Presidency.
The Senate picture does not look good for the GOP in 2022 with Rob Portman’s and Patrick Toomey resignations. Particularly the latter who is from Pennsylvania which Biden triumphed by nearly a million votes.
The FBI are not constrained in getting to the bottom of the insurrection including investigating the President. In the process they will decapitate the illegal militias by consigning their leadership tp jail. Even though Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer is convinced Trump signed secret pardons for himself and the family there are enough State cases to put him away for a long time.
The Republic Party’s path to salvation begins by convicting Trump, then dusting off their 2012 report which concluded that they had to appeal to the minorities in this country if they wanted to remain competitive. None of the latter are likely. This past four years they have gone backwards in a manner never dreamed of. They have backed a totalitarian boor who believes, like the Confederacy, that it is ok to illegally and or violently assume power. They are continuing to back him and by so doing will continue to lose support. The only strategy the Republicans are executing to win is introducing methodologies that restrict the minority vote - a policy they have employed since the nineteenth century.
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