One of the great pleasures of this dark time has been meeting— in their writings, and their appearances on MSNBC — so many excellent commentators on the political and legal developments regarding the atrocious force that’s taken over Conservative America.
But lately, I’ve been noticing some of those good people taking their eye off the ball.
What’s happened lately is that the case against Donald Trump — for launching his attempt to overturn an election, for his coup, for his attempt to overthrow the government of the United States — has been growing stronger. (Stronger by the day, it seems.)
And what’s also been noted is that the Republican base has been shifting away from where they were a year ago — when something like three-fourths of Republican voters declared that their allegiance was to Trump more than to the Republican Party.
Worried about Trump, some good commentators have been taking encouragement from the apparent discernible erosion of that Republican allegiance to Trump.
That’s understandable, but I’m not sure it’s wise.
- The next Presidential election is three years off. But the next congressional election is but nine months off. It’s not Trump who will be on the ballot, but hundreds of Republicans, almost all of whom are running as accomplices of Trump. (Explicitly by endorsing the Big Lie and its illegitimate Constitution-assaulting implications, or implicitly by not standing up for American democracy under attack from this Republican Party.)
- Trump may have led this attempt to overturn an election he lost, but the main body of the Republican Party assisted in that effort in the lead-up to the attempted coup. And that same preponderance of the Republican Party has chosen consistently to cover-up this Republican-assisted Insurrection ever since.
What’s necessary is for the American electorate — which the futures markets are saying are quite likely to reward this essentially treasonous Republican Party with control over Congress next November — to understand that everything that tars Trump tars also the Republican Party.
For Republicans to shift their allegiance way from the human monster that has owned this Party for nearly seven years back to the Party itself may be a good sign.
But the job for the Democrats — and for the responsible news media, and perhaps most particularly for the Select Committee investigating the January 6 Insurrection— is to make it clear that retreating from Trump to the Republican Party in no way represents any escape from the criminality and corruption that has taken over the political force controlling the American right.
Those Americans who are apparently prepared to vote for Republicans this November must be shown in an inescapable way that the Republican Party that would make Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House is completely tied into the sins of Donald Trump.
As the walls close in on Donald Trump, those same walls should be closing in on a political party that
- Jumped on the bandwagon of legal challenges to election results;
- Voted in large numbers against certification of the well-proven legitimate electors;
- Voted against a commission to investigate the attempted coup;
- Voted to acquit a President who refused to acknowledge his defeat and instead incited an Insurrection;
- Continues to attempt to protect their would-be dictator from accountability;
- And whose National Committee just — incredibly — called the January 6 Insurrection “legitimate political discourse.”
Shining a bright light on the Accomplices is at least as important as shining the light on the Mob Boss himself.