Republicans in the US Senate have been signaling in advance their reluctance to convict ex-President Donald Trump for his criminally seditious incitement of a murderous mob of insurgents who stormed the US Capitol on January 6th, resulting in 5 deaths and countless injuries.
The facts are not in dispute here. This was a violent attempted coup against the Congress, the Constitution and the principle of Government of the people, by the people and for the people itself, inspired, organized and egged on by a sitting US President.
While Trump’s actions may not meet the Constitutional standard of Treason to the Nation, they are indisputably treason to Democracy and treason to his own oath of office.
The GOP Senate, who prepared the way for this crime against the Constitution by refusing to call Trump to account for his rampant corruption and prior misdemeanors, knows this full well. That’s why they haven’t even attempted to argue otherwise. No, in order to excuse their continued dereliction of their Constitutional duty, they have resorted to a fig leaf. It is, they claim, unConstitutional to impeach a President after leaving Office.
This is utter fiction. It has no basis either in the Constitution or in Legal precedent. In fact, legal precedent establishes exactly the opposite. Congress has indeed impeached and convicted office holders after they have left office.
What to do since the GOP Senate appears to be committed to continuing down the path of cowardly pandering to Fascism? Some have suggested that we should respond by transforming the Senate trial into a trial of the GOP’s connivance and complicity, root and branch.
This is good in as far as it goes but it isn’t enough.
If these were normal times the way forward would be clear: mass mobilization. Citizens in the streets and at the Offices of their elected officials petitioning for redress of grievance. Making manifest the demand of the majority for accountability and consequences.
But these are not normal times. We are on the midst of a pandemic. We are at a moment when even legitimate, legal public protest may be targeted for violent, terrorist assault.
Nevertheless, this need not silence us. Indeed, it must not.
Between now and the 8th of February each of us can and, I think, should commit not only to ourselves contacting our elected Senators. but to mobilizing others to do so as well. This by letters, phone calls, emails, the lot, calling on them to do their duty in convicting Trump.
Neither should we limit our efforts to our own Senators. Rather, we should bombard all of the GOP Senate in like fashion. It should be made abundantly clear to them that, should they shirk their sworn duty to defend the Constitution, they will face not just the retribution of the voters of their state come election time but the mobilized National opposition of an outraged majority. Call it a virtual march on their offices.
You can find a list of the GOP Senators along with their contact info here.
They must choose either Democracy or Fascism and they must bear the consequences of that choice.