The attempted coup against Trump as the leader of the Republican Party has failed, and the quest to purge his supporters has boomeranged against the elite.
Many local GOP groups cast unanimous votes of censure against officials who betrayed Trump supporters and all Americans by misusing the impeachment proceedings against citizen Trump. The GOP has not seen this level of grassroots energy in decades.
“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men … lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!” wrote the celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns, coining a phrase that John Steinbeck later borrowed for the title of his famous novel.
Never-Trumpers who control the GOP money had a plan for banishing Trump. Consultants who feed at the trough of campaign dollars seek a return to lining their own pockets with fees as candidates would raise money without competition by Trump.
But the continued enthusiastic support for Trump among voters, as confirmed by every recent poll, shows that we are not returning to a gentrified Republican Party run by consultants. Liz Cheney hung on to her leadership position only because the vote was held in secret to conceal who the traitors are.
On Saturday 86% of Republican senators voted for Trump, despite intense arm-twisting to try to toss him overboard as the GOP leader. The scattered few Republicans who voted against him are a discredited bunch of Trump-haters, lame ducks, and recalcitrant globalists.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) was promptly censured by five GOP county organizations in his state, and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) was censured by his statewide party. These extraordinary rebukes by Republican groups against Republican officials reflect a new era of grassroots power within the Republican Party.
“The party is headed in a Trumpist direction,” lamented Sarah Longwell on C-SPAN this morning. She is the Executive Director of a new PAC called the Republican Accountability Project, formed for anti-Trump Republicans.
The hundreds of thousands of Americans who rallied for Trump on January 6th disrupted the carefully laid plans of the Trump-haters. America has a rich history of disrespectful, raucous protests dating back to the Boston Tea Party.
It is the mockery of the sanctimonious officials which incurred their wrath against the mostly peaceful, even fun-seeking, protesters. Nobody likes to be ridiculed, and the self-centered political elite in D.C. dislike it most of all.
China forbids mocking Xi Jinping by comparing him to the cartoon character Winnie the Pooh, and noting the uncanny resemblance. Two Chinese citizens disappeared after posting a video containing such ridicule, and humiliated leaders on Capitol Hill seem to want similar punishment here.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) showed his disdain for the free speech rights of Trump supporters when McConnell ranted against him on Saturday, before voting to acquit. McConnell should have defended First Amendment rights instead.
Congressional tyrants have demanded arresting hundreds of political protesters who made their way into the Capitol, a public building holding a proceeding that should have been open to the public. Complaints are about a little vandalism, but that pales in comparison to the looting of Americans’ pocketbooks by Congress.
It was fake news by the New York Times, not retracted until a month later, that Trump supporters bludgeoned a Capitol police officer to death with a fire extinguisher. There was no truth to that story, yet Democrats based their article of impeachment against Trump on it.
When federal agents should be protecting our country against violent crime, they spend time looking for hundreds more of law-abiding Americans who happened to be in or near the Capitol on January 6th. One video even shows a police officer directing people to enter the building, but vengeance cares nothing about justice.
As many as 800 people are becoming political prisoners of retaliation by Trump-haters, and this emerges as a leading issue in the midterm elections next year. Some are veterans who have risked their lives defending our freedoms against foreign enemies.
Perhaps Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi would be more comfortable serving in the government of China, where harmless protests are brutally suppressed.
The protestors gave us powerful images that should become a rallying cry against the imperial Congress. The image of a jovial man playfully lifting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium is a priceless symbol of how Americans feel about the D.C. elite, as is the picture of a peaceful commoner from Idaho sitting in the feckless Vice President Mike Pence’s chair.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a pro-Trump freshman in the House, is banned from Fox News and excluded from committees, yet immensely popular among her constituents. That attempted purge is failing badly too, as Never-Trumpers cannot stop talking about her.
Voter turnout decides elections now, and that requires enthusiasm for the Republican candidate. Trump has it, while his detractors do not.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
