One word comes to mind when I think of most Republicans in the 117th Congress.
Disgust.
Our democracy was attacked by violent insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021, fueled by a lie from Donald Trump that the presidential election was fraudulent. With zero evidence of widespread voter fraud, a rather large group of Republicans still voted to overturn the election results.
Donald Trump was swiftly impeached a second time by the House of Representatives for inciting an insurrection. Now it’s time for the Senate trial where 67 votes would be needed to convict Trump, or 17 principled Republicans.
It’s disheartening to watch as most GOP senators appear disinterested in the proceedings. Some have come right out and stated nothing will change their mind. How sad for America that Republican partisanship is clearly more important to them than the country as a whole.
I want to say I’m shocked, but that would be a stretch. These very same people on this jury are Trump’s supporters and coconspirators who aided and abetted in the attack on the Capitol. People died. Police died. If this isn’t grounds for conviction to Republicans, what is?
The comparison between the earlier Black Lives Matter protests and the attack on the Capitol is absolutely despicable. The former was about police murdering black people. The latter was a bunch of white supremacists throwing a violent tantrum because their candidate lost.
If politicians from both sides of the aisle can’t come together to convict Trump for this crime against our democracy, then there is no such thing as unity in the United States. I don’t think we recover from this kind of division.
Flip the script and imagine Joe Biden runs and loses in 2024, refuses to accept reality, and incites his followers to attack the Capitol. How would Republicans react then? Would they want some accountability? Fortunately this is a bogus comparison because Biden doesn’t have cultish followers the way Trump does.
But seriously, what moral recourse would any Republican have if there was a future coup d’état by an incumbent Democratic president where similar events played out? Even if I agreed with this persons policies, I still wouldn’t want that.
And that seems to be the problem. Most Republicans in the 117th Congress are not taking the executive eviction well, and it seems they’d rather set a match to the place on their way out instead of moving on with dignity.
So, to all the Republican Representatives who voted not to impeach, to the Senators who vote to acquit, and to anyone who supports no accountability for Donald Trump, I say this from the bottom of my bleeding heart; GFYS.
File:US Capitol east side.JPG. (2021, February 8). Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. Retrieved 15:31, February 11, 2021 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:US_Capitol_east_side.JPG&oldid=531495768.
