If Milquetoast Mike Pence—the guy who puts the “mouse” in pusillanimous—is the universally acclaimed avatar of GOP cowardice, then Mike’s brother Greg is the avatar’s juice-box-sipping vestigial twin.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Greg was rushed out of the Capitol with his brother as a bloodthirsty mob shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” Now, as four convicted Capitol rioters attempt to reenter the Capitol without smashing windows, bashing heads, or trashing the Constitution (i.e., they’re running for Congress), Greg seems oddly ambivalent about the attempted extrajudicial executions of close family members.
Informed that one of the most notorious insurrectionists—the Viking-hatted Jacob Chansley—is running for Congress this election cycle, the elder Pence, a Congress member from Indiana, simply said, “I’ll be darned, huh. It’s up to his constituents.” Well, gee, maybe he’d be more upset if an unmarried woman had succeeded in playing footsies with his brother before Mother could show up to chaperone. Then again, why should he be different than any other Dear Leader-exalting MAGA Republican?
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In an eye-pluckingly horrifying—yet somehow unsurprising—article for NOTUS, reporter and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow Tara Kavaler details many elected Republicans’ reactions to the now very real prospect of literal insurrectionists running for Congress. Spoiler: They’re far less concerned about it than they were about Hunter Biden reimbursing his dad for a truck loan while Joe was a private citizen.
Just get a load of these profiles in porridge:
“Obviously, I want to see the best candidates possible run,” Arizona GOP Rep. Eli Crane told NOTUS. “But at the end of the day, I love it when the American people have variety and choice because that gives them the opportunity to send the best people up here, and I do believe we need better people up here.”
“For any candidate in our great country, voters are able to evaluate what their background is and make that decision,” said retiring Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn.
“It’s not my position to comment on who is eligible and who is not,” said Florida Rep. Byron Donalds. “The Constitution is clear.”
Yes, the Constitution is clear—and it pretty plainly says Donalds’ hero is ineligible to run for president. But maybe Donalds has one of those tiny pocket Constitutions that’s just the Second Amendment unhelpfully embellished by a bunch of superfluous squiggly lines long since redacted by Donald Trump’s derriere.
Then again, congressional Republicans have never been shy about making excuses for the people who nearly brutally murdered them.
NOTUS:
While these Republicans agreed it’s a question for voters to decide, others aren’t concerned for another reason: They say many rioters that day were merely sightseers, caught up in chaos that might have been instigated by federal agents. (There’s no evidence to support that conspiracy theory.)
Top GOP lawmakers have also pushed for lighter treatment of defendants. Earlier this year, when Rep. Elise Stefanik was asked if people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 should be held accountable in court, she said she is worried about how Jan. 6 “hostages” are being treated. House Speaker Mike Johnson, too, opted to blur faces in some footage from that day because “we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ.”
Boy, it didn’t take long for these folks to go from scourges of democracy to conquering heroes—at least in MAGA acolytes’ wee minds. They won’t even blur Hunter Biden’s genitals when they trot out their revenge porn during House committee hearings, but these other dicks are graciously afforded the John Ashcroft statue treatment. God forbid the people who tried to hang the vice president of the United States be exposed.
Of course, we've seen a version of this before. In 2022, Politico noted that “at least 57 individuals who played a role in [Jan. 6’s] events—either by attending the Save America rally that preceded the riots, gathering at the Capitol steps or breaching the Capitol itself—are now running for elected office.” But some of these folks were just gormlessly roaming the grounds because the ghost of Hugo Chavez had zapped their votes away with adrenochrome-powered Italian satellites while Hillary Clinton cackled with delight at her Comet Ping Pong election night watch party. This year, several convicted Jan. 6 defendants are unabashedly tossing their MAGA hats in the gross, mildewy bathtub ring Trump left behind when he oozed out of D.C.
NOTUS:
At least seven Republicans who admitted to being on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 ran for Congress in 2022, and one — Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin — won, but none of them had been charged or convicted of any crime. The current crop of candidates is the first to include Jan. 6 rioters who have actually been convicted of committing crimes that day.
In other words, after spending three years normalizing the grotesquely abnormal and forgiving the unforgivable, Republicans are standing by, cow-eyed and mute, as their chickenshit insurrectionists come home to roost. In addition to Chansley, they include Ryan Zink, Derrick Evans, and Philip Sean Grillo, who were all convicted of felonies in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Needless to say, Democrats have taken a somewhat more jaundiced attitude toward these jabronis. “If the Republicans keep putting up election deniers and people who either participated in or support the insurrection, they’re going to keep losing races,” Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton told NOTUS. “The voters have spoken with clarity that they reject that level of extremism.”
Well, yeah, they have. But for some reason we’re forced to white-knuckle our way through yet another election cycle. Seriously, when will this madness end?
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Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link.
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