Opinion | Our constitutional crisis is already here

Washington Post - 23 September 2021   (or EPUB)

(Sorry about the lack of paragraph lineup.)

First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running.

Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his

victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020

election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge

future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates

have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried

meekly to do in the California recall contest.

Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to

an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters

will have the control over state and local election o cials that they lacked in

2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state o cials who effectively saved the

country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “nd” more

votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from o ce.

Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the

election certication process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or

passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election

authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other

executive-branch o cers to the legislature.

Arizona bill atly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of

state’s issuance or certication of a presidential elector’s certicate of

election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose

criminal penalties on local election o cials alleged to have committed

“technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.

The stage is thus being set for chaos. Imagine weeks of competing mass

protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory

and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. Partisans on

both sides are likely to be better armed and more willing to inict harm than

they were in 2020. Would governors call out the National Guard?

Would President Biden nationalize the Guard and place it under his control,

invoke the Insurrection Act, and send troops into Pennsylvania or Texas or

Wisconsin to quell violent protests? Deploying federal power in the states

would be decried as tyranny. Biden would nd himself where other presidents

have been — where Andrew Jackson was during the nullication crisis, or

where Abraham Lincoln was after the South seceded — navigating without

rules or precedents, making his own judgments about what constitutional

powers he does and doesn’t have.

Today’s arguments over the libuster will seem quaint in three years if the

American political system enters a crisis for which the Constitution offers no

remedy.

Most Americans — and all but a handful of politicians — have refused to take

this possibility seriously enough to try to prevent it. As has so often been the

case in other countries where fascist leaders arise, their would-be opponents

are paralyzed in confusion and amazement at this charismatic authoritarian.

They have followed the standard model of appeasement, which always

begins with underestimation. The political and intellectual establishments in

both parties have been underestimating Trump since he emerged on the

scene in 2015.

They underestimated the extent of his popularity and the strength of his hold

on his followers; they underestimated his ability to take control of the

Republican Party; and then they underestimated how far he was willing to go

to retain power.

The fact that he failed to overturn the 2020 election has reassured many that

the American system remains secure, though it easily could have gone the

other way — if Biden had not been safely ahead in all four states where the

vote was close; if Trump had been more competent and more in control of the

decision-makers in his administration, Congress and the states.

As it was, Trump came close to bringing off a coup earlier this year. All that

prevented it was a handful of state o cials with notable courage and

integrity, and the reluctance of two attorneys general and a vice president to

obey orders they deemed inappropriate.

These were not the checks and balances the Framers had in mind when they

designed the Constitution, of course, but Trump has exposed the inadequacy

of those protections. The Founders did not foresee the Trump phenomenon,

in part because they did not foresee national parties. They anticipated the

threat of a demagogue, but not of a national cult of personality. They

assumed that the new republic’s vast expanse and the historic divisions

among the 13 ercely independent states would pose insuperable barriers to

national movements based on party or personality. “Petty” demagogues

might sway their own states, where they were known and had inuence, but

not the whole nation with its diverse populations and divergent interests.

Such checks and balances as the Framers put in place, therefore, depended

on the separation of the three branches of government, each of which, they

believed, would zealously guard its own power and prerogatives.

The Framers did not establish safeguards against the possibility that national-

party solidarity would transcend state boundaries because they did not

imagine such a thing was possible. Nor did they foresee that members of

Congress, and perhaps members of the judicial branch, too, would refuse to

check the power of a president from their own party.

In recent decades, however, party loyalty has superseded branch loyalty, and

never more so than in the Trump era. As the two Trump impeachments

showed, if members of Congress are willing to defend or ignore the

president’s actions simply because he is their party leader, then conviction

and removal become all but impossible.

In such circumstances, the Framers left no other check against usurpation by

the executive — except (small-r) republican virtue.

Critics and supporters alike have consistently failed to recognize what a

unique gure Trump is in American history. Because his followers share

fundamentally conservative views, many see Trump as merely the

continuation, and perhaps the logical culmination, of the Reagan Revolution.

This is a mistake: Although most Trump supporters are or have become

Republicans, they hold a set of beliefs that were not necessarily shared by all

Republicans. Some Trump supporters are former Democrats and

independents. In fact, the passions that animate the Trump movement are as

old as the republic and have found a home in both parties at one time or

another.

Suspicion of and hostility toward the federal government; racial hatred and

fear; a concern that modern, secular society undermines religion and

traditional morality; economic anxiety in an age of rapid technological change;

class tensions, with subtle condescension on one side and resentment on the

other; distrust of the broader world, especially Europe, and its insidious

inuence in subverting American freedom — such views and attitudes have

been part of the fabric of U.S. politics since the anti-Federalists, the Whiskey

Rebellion and Thomas Jefferson.

The Democratic Party was the home of white supremacists until they jumped

to George Wallace in 1968 and later to the Republicans.

Liberals and Democrats in particular need to distinguish between their

ongoing battle with Republican policies and the challenge posed by Trump

and his followers. One can be fought through the processes of the

constitutional system; the other is an assault on the Constitution itself.

What makes the Trump movement historically unique is not its passions and

paranoias. It is the fact that for millions of Americans, Trump himself is the

response to their fears and resentments. This is a stronger bond between

leader and followers than anything seen before in U.S. political movements.

Although the Founders feared the rise of a king or a Caesar, for two centuries

Americans proved relatively immune to unwavering hero-worship of

politicians.

Their men on horseback — Theodore Roosevelt, Grant, even Washington —

were not regarded as infallible. This was true of great populist leaders as well.

William Jennings Bryan a century ago was venerated because he advanced

certain ideas and policies, but he did not enjoy unquestioning loyalty from his

followers. Even Reagan was criticized by conservatives for selling out

conservative principles, for decit spending, for his equivocal stance on

abortion, for being “soft” on the Soviet Union.

Trump is different, which is one reason the political system has struggled to

understand, much less contain, him. The American liberal worldview tends to

search for material and economic explanations for everything, and no doubt a

good number of Trump supporters have grounds to complain about their lot in

life.

But their bond with Trump has little to do with economics or other material

concerns. They believe the U.S. government and society have been captured

by socialists, minority groups and sexual deviants. They see the Republican

Party establishment as corrupt and weak — “losers,” to use Trump’s word,

unable to challenge the reigning liberal hegemony. They view Trump as

strong and deant, willing to take on the establishment, Democrats, RINOs,

liberal media, antifa, the Squad, Big Tech and the “Mitch McConnell

Republicans.”

His charismatic leadership has given millions of Americans a feeling of

purpose and empowerment, a new sense of identity.

While Trump’s critics see him as too narcissistic to be any kind of leader, his

supporters admire his unapologetic, militant selshness. Unlike

establishment Republicans, Trump speaks without embarrassment on behalf

of an aggrieved segment of Americans, not exclusively White, who feel they

have been taking it on the chin for too long. And that is all he needs to do.

There was a time when political analysts wondered what would happen when

Trump failed to “deliver” for his constituents. But the most important thing

Trump delivers is himself. His egomania is part of his appeal. In his professed

victimization by the media and the “elites,” his followers see their own

victimization. That is why attacks on Trump by the elites only strengthen his

bond with his followers. That is why millions of Trump supporters have even

been willing to risk death as part of their show of solidarity: When Trump’s

enemies cited his mishandling of the pandemic to discredit him, their answer

was to reject the pandemic told a reporter.

Because the Trump movement is less about policies than about Trump

himself, it has undermined the normal role of American political parties, which

is to absorb new political and ideological movements into the mainstream.

Bryan never became president, but some of his populist policies were

adopted by both political parties. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s supporters might not

have wanted Biden for president, but having lost the nomination battle they

could work on getting Biden to pursue their agenda. Liberal democracy

requires acceptance of adverse electoral results, a willingness to

countenance the temporary rule of those with whom we disagree.

As historian Richard Hofstadter observed, it requires that people “endure error

in the interest of social peace.” Part of that willingness stems from the belief

that the democratic system makes it possible to work, even in opposition, to

correct the ruling party’s errors and overreach. Movements based on ideas

and policies can also quickly shift their allegiances. Today, the progressives’

ag-bearer might be Sanders, but tomorrow it could be Sen. Elizabeth Warren

or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or someone else.

One Trump supporter didn’t go to the hospital after developing covid-19

symptoms because he didn’t want to contribute to the liberal case against

Trump. “I’m not going to add to the numbers,” he

For a movement built around a cult of personality, these adjustments are not

possible. For Trump supporters, the “error” is that Trump was cheated out of

reelection by what he has told them is an oppressive, communist, Democrat

regime writes one conservative intellectual.

The government, as one Trump supporter put it, “is monopolized by a Regime

that believes [Trump voters] are beneath representation, and will observe no

limits to keep them [from] getting it." If so, the intellectual posits, what choice

do they have but to view the government as the enemy and to become “

While the defeat of a sitting president normally leads to a struggle to claim the

party’s mantle, so far no Republican has been able to challenge Trump’s grip

on Republican voters: not Sen. Josh Hawley, not Sen. Tom Cotton, not Tucker

Carlson, not Gov. Ron DeSantis.

It is still all about Trump. The fact that he is not in o ce means that the United

States is “a territory controlled by enemy tribes,” The Trump movement might

not have begun as an insurrection, but it became one after its leader claimed

he had been cheated out of reelection. For Trump supporters, the events of

Jan. 6 were not an embarrassing debacle but a patriotic effort to save the

nation, by violent action if necessary. As one 56-year-old Michigan woman

explained: “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage.

We were just there to overthrow the government.”

The banal normalcy of the great majority of Trump’s supporters, including

those who went to the Capitol on Jan. 6, has befuddled many observers.

Although private militia groups and white supremacists played a part in the

attack, 90 percent of those arrested or charged had no ties to such groups.

The majority were middle-class and middle-aged; 40 percent were business

owners or white-collar workers. They came mostly from purple, not red,

counties.

Most Trump supporters are good parents, good neighbors and solid members

of their communities. Their bigotry, for the most part, is typical white

American bigotry, perhaps with an added measure of resentment and a less

ltered mode of expression since Trump arrived on the scene. But these are

normal people in the sense that they think and act as people have for

centuries. They put their trust in family, tribe, religion and race. Although

zealous in defense of their own rights and freedoms, they are less concerned

about the rights and freedoms of those who are not like them.

That, too, is not unusual. What is unnatural is to value the rights of others who

are unlike you as much as you value your own.

As it happens, however, that is what the American experiment in republican

democracy requires. It is what the Framers meant by “republican virtue,” a

love of freedom not only for oneself but also as an abstract, universal good; a

love of self-government as an ideal; a commitment to abide by the laws

passed by legitimate democratic processes; and a healthy fear of and

vigilance against tyranny of any kind. Even James Madison, who framed the

Constitution on the assumption that people would always pursue their selsh

interests, nevertheless argued that it was “chimerical” to believe that any

form of government could “secure liberty and happiness without any virtue in

the people.”

Al Gore and his supporters displayed republican virtue when they abided by

the Supreme Court’s judgment in 2000 despite the partisan nature of the

justices’ decision. (Whether the court itself displayed republican virtue is

another question.)

The events of Jan. 6, on the other hand, proved that Trump and his most die-

hard supporters are prepared to defy constitutional and democratic norms,

just as revolutionary movements have in the past. While it might be shocking

to learn that normal, decent Americans can support a violent assault on the

Capitol, it shows that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their

founding principles and institutions.

Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also

from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and

neighbors, too. People do things as part of a mass movement that they would

not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to

destroy their way of life.

It would be foolish to imagine that the violence of Jan. 6 was an aberration

that will not be repeated. Because Trump supporters see those events as a

patriotic defense of the nation, there is every reason to expect more such

episodes. Trump has returned to the explosive rhetoric of that day, insisting

that he won in a “landslide,” that the “radical left Democrat communist party”

stole the presidency in the “most corrupt, dishonest, and unfair election in the

history of our country” and that they have to give it back.

He has targeted for defeat those Republicans who voted for his impeachment

— or criticized him for his role in the riot. Already, there have been threats to

bomb polling sites, kidnap o cials and attack state capitols. “You and your

family will be killed very slowly,” the wife of Georgia’s top election o cial was

texted earlier this year.

They told police o cers that they had fought for their country before and

were ghting for it again. insists “there is no way they win elections without

cheating. Trump tells them, so today “we have no choice. We have to ght” to

restore “our American birthright.”

Nor can one assume that the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers would

again play a subordinate role when the next riot unfolds.

Looking ahead to 2022 and 2024, Trump

There’s no way.” So, if the results come in showing another Democratic

victory, Trump’s supporters will know what to do. Just as “generations of

patriots” gave “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives” to build

America,

Veterans who assaulted the Capitol

Opinion | Our constitutional crisis is already here

Where does the Republican Party stand in all this? The party gave birth to and

nurtured this movement; it bears full responsibility for establishing the

conditions in which Trump could capture the loyalty of 90 percent of

Republican voters.

hundreds of conservative court appointments, including three Supreme Court

justices; tax cuts; immigration restrictions; and deep reductions in regulations

on business. Yet Trump’s triumph also had elements of a hostile takeover.

The movement’s passion was for Trump, not the party. GOP primary voters

chose Trump over the various avors of establishment Republicanism (Jeb

Bush, Marco Rubio), and after Trump’s election they continued to regard

establishment Republicans as enemies. Longtime party heroes like Paul Ryan

were cast into oblivion for disparaging Trump. Even staunch supporters such

as Jeff Sessions eventually became villains when they would not do as Trump

demanded. Those who survived had a di cult balancing act: to use Trump’s

appeal to pass the Republican agenda while also controlling Trump’s

excesses, which they worried could ultimately threaten the party’s interests.

Republican leaders were more than happy to ride Trump’s coattails if it meant

getting paid off with

That plan seemed plausible in 2017. Unlike other insurgent leaders, Trump

had not spent time in the political wilderness building a party and surrounding

himself with loyalists. He had to choose from an existing pool of Republican

o cials, who varied in their willingness to do his bidding. The GOP

establishment hoped that the presence of “adults” would restrain him,

protecting their traditional agenda and, in their view, the country’s interests,

from his worst instincts.

This was a miscalculation. Trump’s grip on his supporters left no room for an

alternative power center in the party. One by one, the “adults” resigned or

were run off. The dissent and contrary opinions that exist in every party — the

Northeast moderate Republicans in Reagan’s day; the progressives in today’s

Democratic Party — disappeared from Trump’s Republican Party. The only

real issue was Trump himself, and on that there could be no dissent. Those

who disapproved of Trump could either keep silent or leave.

The takeover extended beyond the level of political leadership. Modern

political parties are an ecosystem of interest groups, lobby organizations, job

seekers, campaign donors and intellectuals. All have a stake in the party’s

viability; all ultimately depend on being roughly aligned with wherever the

party is at a given moment; and so all had to make their peace with Trump,

too. Conservative publications that once opposed him as unt for the

presidency had to reverse course or lose readership and funding. Pundits had

to adjust to the demands of their pro-Trump audiences — and were rewarded

handsomely when they did. Donors who had opposed Trump during the

primaries fell into line, if only to preserve some inuence on the issues that

mattered to them. Advocacy organizations that had previously seen their role

as holding the Republican Party to certain principles, and thus often dissented

from the party leadership, either became advocates for Trump or lost clout. It

was no surprise that elected o cials feared taking on the Trump movement

and that Republican job seekers either kept silent about their views or made

show-trial-like apologies for past criticism. Ambition is a powerful antidote to

moral qualms.

Perhaps American conservatism was never comfortable with the American

experiment in liberal democracy, but certainly since Trump took over their

party, many conservatives have revealed a hostility to core American beliefs.

More revealing was the behavior of Republican elder statesmen, former

secretaries of state in their 80s or 90s who had no further ambitions for high

o ce and seemingly nothing to lose by speaking out. Despite their known

abhorrence of everything Trump stood for, these old lions refused to criticize

him. They were unwilling to come out against a Republican Party to which

they had devoted their professional lives, even when the party was led by

someone they detested. Whatever they thought about Trump, moreover,

Republican elders disliked Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Democrats

more. Again, this is not so unusual.

German conservatives accommodated Adolf Hitler in large part because they

opposed the socialists more than they opposed the Nazis, who, after all,

shared many of their basic prejudices. As for conservative intellectuals, even

those who had spent years arguing that Woodrow Wilson was a tyrant

because he created the Federal Reserve and supported child labor laws

seemed to have no concerns about whether Trump was a would-be despot.

They not only came to Trump’s defense but fashioned political doctrines to

justify his rule, lling in the wide gaps of his nonexistent ideology with an

appeal to “conservative nationalism” and conservative populism.

All this has left few dissenting voices within the Republican ecosystem. The

Republican Party today is a zombie party. Its leaders go through the motions

of governing in pursuit of traditional Republican goals, wrestling over

infrastructure spending and foreign policy, even as real power in the party has

leached away to Trump. From the uneasy and sometimes contentious

partnership during Trump’s four years in o ce, the party’s main if not sole

purpose today is as the willing enabler of Trump’s efforts to game the

electoral system to ensure his return to power.

With the party rmly under his thumb, Trump is now ghting the Biden

administration on separate fronts. One is normal, legitimate political

competition, where Republicans criticize Biden’s policies, feed and ght the

culture wars, and in general behave like a typical hostile opposition.

The other front is outside the bounds of constitutional and democratic

competition and into the realm of illegal or extralegal efforts to undermine the

electoral process. The two are intimately related, because the Republican

Party has used its institutional power in the political sphere to shield Trump

and his followers from the consequences of their illegal and extralegal

activities in the lead-up to Jan. 6. Thus, Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Elise

Stefanik, in their roles as party leaders, run interference for the Trump

movement in the sphere of legitimate politics, while Republicans in lesser

positions cheer on the Jan. 6 perpetrators, turning them into martyrs and

heroes, and encouraging illegal acts in the future.

This pincer assault has several advantages. Republican politicians and would-

be policymakers can play the role of the legitimate opposition. They can

rediscover their hawkish internationalist foreign policy (suspended during the

Trump years) and their decit-minded economics (also suspended during the

Trump years). They can go on the mainstream Sunday shows and critique the

Biden administration on issues such as Afghanistan. They can pretend that

Trump is no longer part of the equation. Biden is the president, after all, and

his administration is not exactly without faults.

Yet whatever the legitimacy of Republican critiques of Biden, there is a

fundamental disingenuousness to it all. It is a dodge. Republicans focus on

China and critical race theory and avoid any mention of Trump, even as the

party works to x the next election in his favor. The left hand professes to

know nothing of what the right hand is doing.

Even Trump opponents play along. Republicans such as Sens. Mitt Romney

and Ben Sasse have condemned the events of Jan. 6, criticized Trump and

even voted for his impeachment, but in other respects they continue to act as

good Republicans and conservatives. On issues such as the libuster,

Romney and others insist on preserving “regular order” and conducting

political and legislative business as usual, even though they know that

Trump’s lieutenants in their party are working to subvert the next presidential

election.

The result is that even these anti-Trump Republicans are enabling the

insurrection. Revolutionary movements usually operate outside a society’s

power structures.

But the Trump movement also enjoys unprecedented inuence within those

structures. It dominates the coverage on several cable news networks,

numerous conservative magazines, hundreds of talk radio stations and all

kinds of online platforms. It has access to nancing from rich individuals and

the Republican National Committee’s donor pool. And, not least, it controls

one of the country’s two national parties. All that is reason enough to expect

another challenge, for what movement would fail to take advantage of such

favorable circumstances to make a play for power?

Today, we are in a time of hope and illusion. The same people who said that

Trump wouldn’t try to overturn the last election now say we have nothing to

worry about with the next one. Republicans have been playing this game for

ve years, rst pooh-poohing concerns about Trump’s intentions, or about the

likelihood of their being realized, and then going silent, or worse, when what

they insisted was improbable came to pass. These days, even the anti-Trump

media constantly looks for signs that Trump’s inuence might be fading and

that drastic measures might not be necessary.

The world will look very different in 14 months if, as seems likely, the

Republican zombie party wins control of the House. At that point, with the

political winds clearly blowing in his favor, Trump is all but certain to announce

his candidacy, and social media constraints on his speech are likely to be

lifted, since Facebook and Twitter would have a hard time justifying censoring

his campaign. With his megaphone back, Trump would once again dominate

news coverage, as outlets prove unable to resist covering him around the

clock if only for nancial reasons.

But this time, Trump would have advantages that he lacked in 2016 and 2020,

including more loyal o cials in state and local governments; the Republicans

in Congress; and the backing of GOP donors, think tanks and journals of

opinion. And he will have the Trump movement, including many who are

armed and ready to be activated, again. Who is going to stop him then? On its

current trajectory, the 2024 Republican Party will make the 2020 Republican

Party seem positively deant.

Those who criticize Biden and the Democrats for not doing enough to prevent

this disaster are not being fair. There is not much they can do without

Republican cooperation, especially if they lose control of either chamber in

2022. It has become fashionable to write off any possibility that a handful of

Republicans might rise up to save the day. This preemptive capitulation has

certainly served well those Republicans who might otherwise be held to

account for their cowardice. How nice for them that everyone has decided to

focus re on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

Yet it is largely upon these Republicans that the fate of the republic rests.

Seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump for inciting an insurrection

and attempting to overturn a free and fair election: Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy,

Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Romney, Sasse and Patrick J. Toomey. It was

a brave vote, a display of republican virtue, especially for the ve who are not

retiring in 2022. All have faced angry backlashes — Romney was booed and

called a traitor at the Utah Republican convention; Burr and Cassidy were

unanimously censured by their state parties.

Yet as much credit as they deserve for taking this stand, it was almost entirely

symbolic. When it comes to concrete action that might prevent a debacle in

2024, they have balked.

Specically, they have refused to work with Democrats to pass legislation

limiting state legislatures’ ability to overturn the results of future elections, to

ensure that the federal government continues to have some say when states

try to limit voting rights, to provide federal protection to state and local

election workers who face threats, and in general to make clear to the nation

that a bipartisan majority in the Senate opposes the subversion of the popular

will. Why?

It can’t be because they think they have a future in a Trump-dominated party.

Even if they manage to get reelected, what kind of government would they be

serving in? They can’t be under any illusion about what a second Trump term

would mean. Trump’s disdain for the rule of law is clear. His exoneration from

the charges leveled in his impeachment trials — the only o cial, legal

response to his actions — practically ensures that he would wield power even

more aggressively. His experience with unreliable subordinates in his rst

term is likely to guide personnel decisions in a second. Only total loyalists

would serve at the head of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, National

Security Agency and the Pentagon. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs will not

be someone likely to place his or her own judgment above that of their civilian

commander in chief.

Nor would a Republican Senate fail to conrm Trump loyalists. In such a

world, with Trump and his lieutenants in charge of all the levers of state

power, including its growing capacity for surveillance, opposing Trump would

become increasingly risky for Republicans and Democrats alike.

A Trump victory is likely to mean at least the temporary suspension of

American democracy as we have known it.

We are already in a constitutional crisis. The destruction of democracy might

not come until November 2024, but critical steps in that direction are

happening now. In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass

legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. Now it is impossible only

because anti-Trump Republicans, and even some Democrats, refuse to tinker

with the libuster. It is impossible because, despite all that has happened,

some people still wish to be good Republicans even as they oppose Trump.

These decisions will not wear well as the nation tumbles into full-blown crisis.

One wonders whether modern American politicians, in either party, have it in

them to make such bold moves, whether they have the insight to see where

events are going and the courage to do whatever is necessary to save the

democratic system. If that means political suicide for this handful of

Republicans, wouldn’t it be better to go out ghting for democracy than to

slink off quietly into the night?

It is not impossible for politicians to make such a leap. The Republican Party

itself was formed in the 1850s by politicians who abandoned their previous

party — former Whigs, former Democrats and former members of the Liberty

and Free Soil parties. While Whig and Democratic party stalwarts such as

Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas juggled and compromised, doing their best

to ensure that the issue of slavery did not destroy their great parties, others

decided that the parties had become an obstacle to justice and a threat to the

nation’s continued viability.

Romney & Co. don’t have to abandon their party. They can fashion

themselves as Constitutional Republicans who, in the present emergency, are

willing to form a national unity coalition in the Senate for the sole purpose of

saving the republic. Their cooperation with Democrats could be strictly limited

to matters relating to the Constitution and elections. Or they might strive for a

temporary governing consensus on a host of critical issues: government

spending, defense, immigration and even the persistent covid-19 pandemic,

effectively setting aside the usual battles to focus on the more vital and

immediate need to preserve the United States.

It takes two, of course, to form a national unity coalition, and Democrats can

make it harder or easier for anti-Trump Republicans to join. Some profess to

see no distinction between the threat posed by Trump and the threat posed

by the GOP. They prefer to use Trump as a weapon in the ongoing political

battle, and not only as a way of discrediting and defeating today’s Republican

Party but to paint all GOP policies for the past 30 years as nothing more than

precursors to Trumpism. bad history is no cure for what ails the nation.

Although today’s Trump-controlled Republican Party does need to be fought

and defeated, this kind of opportunistic partisanship and conspiracy-

mongering, in addition to being

Senate Democrats were wise to cut down their once-massive voting rights

wish list and get behind the smaller compromise measure unveiled last week

by Manchin and Sen. Amy Klobuchar. But they have yet to attract any votes

from their Republican colleagues for the measure. Heading into the next

election, it is vital to protect election workers, same-day registration and early

voting. It will also still be necessary to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights

Advancement Act, which directly addresses the state legislatures’ electoral

power grab. Other battles — such as making Election Day a federal holiday

and banning partisan gerrymandering — might better be postponed. Efforts to

prevent a debacle in 2024 cannot. Democrats need to give anti-Trump

Republicans a chance to do the right thing.

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WHO and WHAT is behind it all ? : >

The bottom line is for the people to regain their original, moral principles, which have intentionally been watered out over the past generations by our press, TV, and other media owned by the Illuminati/Bilderberger Group, corrupting our morals by making misbehavior acceptable to our society. Only in this way shall we conquer this oncoming wave of evil.

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Administrator

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