Let’s not beat around the bush. The Republican Party has told the nation and the world that it no longer believes in democracy and the rule of law. That’s the only conclusion you can draw from an official Republican National Committee resolution that declared the events of Jan. 6 “legitimate political discourse,” and effectively kicked Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger out of the party for—horrors!—serving on the House committee charged with getting to the bottom of that horrible day’s events.
There was already ample reason to question the GOP’s commitment to democracy long before it adopted this fundamentally unAmerican and undemocratic resolution. It has firmly lashed itself to Donald Trump despite overwhelming evidence that he not only incited this insurrection, but did so when he knew damn well that he had lost.
This is why when RNC Chairman Ronna McDaniel attempted to say that the resolution wasn’t really endorsing the violence that took place at the Capitol, she only proved what we have known for some time. That is, she is morally bankrupt.
In case you missed it, the resolution appears to be a full-throated endorsement of both the insurrection and the Big Lie that led to it. It slams Cheney and Kinzinger for appearing to show “that they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022,” but claimed that while they “purport to be members of the Republican Party,” they have actually lent their imprimatur to “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
But McDaniel would have us believe that the RNC isn’t really endorsing political violence. From The New York Times:
After the vote, party leaders rushed to clarify that language, saying it was never meant to apply to rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name.
“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”
Considering what we now know, we can be pardoned for thinking that McDaniel, and the RNC as a whole, have a funny definition of “legitimate political discourse.” Based on a welter of evidence from the published record, Trump was bleating and screeting about fraud when he was well aware that Biden had won.
According to Axios, he knew at least as early as Nov. 7 that he had shot his last legal bolt to stay in office, and as early as Nov. 12 that this bolt had missed. According to the NYT, Trump and his legal team knew as early as a week after the election that there was no basis to claims that voting machines powered by Dominion Voting Systems were switching votes in Georgia. Also according to the NYT, the Trump campaign knew as early as Nov. 14 that there was no basis to the most outlandish claims floating around about Dominion. According to both Reuters and The Washington Post, Trump knew as early as Nov. 20 that he had no realistic chance of overturning Biden’s lead in Michigan—which, in turn, closed off any politically realistic path for him to get to 270. It can be argued that any path for him closed off with the debunking of claims that votes in Georgia were being switched.
In other words, Trump knew at some point in November that he had lost—and all of his efforts to stay in office after that date were an effort to further an attempted self-coup, with the attack on the Capitol being the culmination of that self-coup. And yet, the RNC insults our intelligence by insisting that this this was “legitimate political discourse.”
Apparently the RNC would also have us believe that when Republican lawmakers maintained their objections even after order was restored, they were engaging in “legitimate political discourse.” Well, Republican strategist Scott Jennings would disagree. Two days after that horror, Jennings asked, “Once the Capitol had been occupied, how can you give quarter to the viewpoint that caused the occupation?” Jennings may have posed that question to Sen. Josh Hawley, but that applies in equal measure to the RNC as well.
We’ve known for some time that McDaniel has sold her soul to Trump. Well, any doubt this was the case was erased when she tried to distance herself and the RNC from the violence of Jan. 6. But in so doing, she only proved that she is the morally bankrupt chairwoman of a morally bankrupt party.
