In their haste to rebuke two Republican congressmen who have condemned the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and then-President Donald Trump’s role in fueling it, Republican leaders have stumbled into defending mob rule.
Yes, that sounds about as nutty as Abraham Lincoln defending the South Carolina militia’s attack on Fort Sumter in 1861.
But, since we’re talking about an attack on the Capitol that tried to interrupt the certification of a presidential election, the core of our democracy, it’s not much of an exaggeration.
At least nine deaths were linked to the insurrection. More than 150 officers were injured and more than 725 people arrested, including 11 Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy against our government.
Yet, the Grand Old Party in its current Trump-dominated condition has tried to shift its attention, and ours, to members of its own ranks who don’t fall in line with Trump’s narrative.
In a voice vote at their winter meeting in Salt Lake City, the Republican National Committee censured Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming for merely participating in the House investigation of the attack, calling it the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
“Legitimate political discourse?”
My mind flashed backed to then-Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri and his gaffe about “legitimate rape” in his 2012 Senate campaign. Answering a question in a television interview about allowing abortion in cases of rape, he responded, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Despite his apologies, his campaign never seemed to recover. He eventually lost to Democratic opponent Claire McCaskill, a former prosecutor who frequently reminded audiences of the “hundreds of rape cases” that she had handled.
Lesson: Don’t start people talking about issues you’d rather have them forget.
The Republican Party can’t get away from its conversion during the Trump regime into an industrial grievance complex, dog whistling to hold onto its wacky wing with increasingly feeble claims of benign purpose.
After the attack, I wondered how would GOP lawmakers have reacted if the Capitol invaders had been supporters of Democratic presidents like Barack Obama or Joe Biden?
Fortunately, there are many Republicans who are a lot more sensible, even if they seem to be hard to find among those who are currently holding office — or seeking it.
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Former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, a sensibly conservative Republican of the sort that sometimes seems to be close to extinction, told a reporter that the GOP declaration “should make all real Republicans sick.” Calling the attack “legitimate political discourse,” he said, “is a complete reversal of what we always have been and should be.”
There are many other Republicans who feel the same way, but too many have become what Cheney calls “willing hostages” to the regime of Trumpian dominance.
Their only rescue may have to come from within, unless Democrats can get themselves together in a unified way, of which we haven’t seen much since Obama’s leadership of the party.
And the same is true of Democrats, whose abundant factions of left and far-left Joe Biden is trying to pull together in these polarized times. As they face the midterm elections, Democrats can’t rely on Trump and Trumpism to provide the same unifying opposition that helped Biden to win in 2020, no matter how illegitimate today’s Republicans may appear to be.
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Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.
Twitter @cptime