Tag Archives: Marco Rubio

Democracy, Donald Trump, Republicans

Most Republicans refuse to hold Donald Trump accountable, even after assault on the Capitol

Since the 2016 inauguration, most Republicans — if they didn’t step up to defend and support him — have dodged and weaved, made excuses, changed the subject, ducked reporters and declined to comment, when confronted with norm-busting outrages by Donald Trump. Throughout four years of aberrant presidential behavior, there have been a handful of GOP critics who objected forthrightly to one discrete thing or another, but then retreated into silence (and acquiescence); other Republicans have (at most) tut-tutted about tweets, overlooking every other crash through the guardrails of democracy. Virtually all Republicans serving in the Senate and the House — whether voicing occasional murmurs of disapproval or not — hardly ever strayed from the Trump-GOP party line. They were willfully blind to Trump’s off-the-rails conduct.

The Republican Party has never been willing to hold the President accountable for his actions. Not even when national security was as stake — from choosing Putin over the Intelligence Community in Helsinki, to betraying American allies in Syria, to extorting the Ukrainian president, to refusing to utter a word of criticism regarding Russian bounties on American soldiers or cyberattacks on government agencies and corporations — the pattern has been to let it slide. Trump made implementing tax cuts and packing the courts possible. Republicans kept their heads down, celebrated their partisan victories, and endeavored to preserve their careers.

At this stage — four days after Trump instigated the crowd that assaulted the Capitol, seeking to overturn the election — the pattern hasn’t changed one whit. There are a handful of GOP critics who have taken their leader to task, while the vast majority of Republicans have stayed silent, sought to deflect Trump’s sedition by changing the subject, and absolutely refused to hold him accountable.

(The pattern looks different but only because of a handful of names, including four Senators: Mitt Romney, Pat Toomey, Lisa Murkowski, and Ben Sasse. Yes, their voices have our attention, but this is still a small number of Republicans. Turning to the House, few Republicans — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger stand out — have objected to Trump’s anti-democratic rampaging.)

Look no further than House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. On Friday, he issued a statement that condemned “the violence, destruction, and chaos that unfolded at the Capitol on Wednesday” as “unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-American.” He said he had spoken with Trump (after the rioting had unfolded) to advise him that “he had a great responsibility to intervene to quell the mob and start the healing process.”

There is no further reference to Donald Trump in McCarthy’s statement, no suggestion that Trump paused to consider McCarthy’s advice, and not a hint that the President bears any responsibility for the violence he encouraged. McCarthy (with most Republicans) has let Donald Trump off the hook.

The Minority Leader hasn’t acknowledged that the rioters were Trump supporters of all stripes, from (what passes for) mainstream Republicans to fringe groups and true believers who revere the President.

Donald Trump has waged a months-long campaign to challenge the integrity of the election; to hurl baseless charges of fraud; to press, through established legal channels as well as through rogue, illegal, and corrupt efforts without precedent in American history, to overturn a democratic election. After Georgia officials refused to bend to Trump’s will, he turned to the ceremonial certification of the Electoral College vote in Congress. While Vice President Pence declined to play along with the Trump script, and a violent mob could only delay the count, Senate and House Republicans got on board to challenge the results in several battleground states that Trump lost.

McCarthy’s January 8 statement acknowledges none of this, though I submit that Trump’s campaign has been “unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-American,” the tactics of a wannabe strongman, not the elected leader of a free country. McCarthy doesn’t acknowledge that Donald Trump bears the least responsibility for any of this.

McCarthy’s statement appeals to President-elect Joe Biden to “work together to lower the temperature and unite the country to solve America’s challenges.” And he doesn’t spare high-flown rhetoric in his statement:

The coronavirus is still coursing through our communities, businesses and workers are facing unprecedented stress, and children are falling behind. Threats from adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran are increasing. As leaders, we must call on our better angels and refocus our efforts on working directly for the American people. United we can deliver peace, strength, and prosperity our country needs. Divided, we will fail.

In a statement a day earlier, the Majority Leader acknowledged his role in casting doubt on the integrity of the election. He noted that “millions of Americans” questioned that integrity, without referencing the role of the President, Congressional Republicans, and conservative media in spreading lies. He further proclaimed the challenges served “to ensure that our country follows an accurate and accountable process.” He doesn’t note that after the Trump mob trashed the Capitol, McCarthy (and 139 of his House colleagues, plus 8 Senators, Republicans all) returned to the chamber to challenge the integrity — without any factual basis — of the election results in Pennsylvania.

Never mind McCarthy’s role in the campaign to delegitimize the election; never mind doubts about the sincerity of his appeal to unity. What is indisputable is that McCarthy declines to ascribe responsibility to Donald Trump for either the welter of lies regarding the election or the full-court press to overturn the results.

In the Senate, Marco Rubio’s stance is instructive. While Rubio, a perennial weathervane in the Republican caucus, stood with the majority of his colleagues in rejecting the challenges, he is not prepared to hold Donald Trump responsible for his anti-democratic crusade. Instead, Rubio has decided to change the subject. He has gone on a tear, first criticizing Biden’s comments — which “makes everybody blow up and go back in their corner” — and which equally characterized Rubio, who never left his corner. Then the next day he turned his attention to a perennial Republican grievance: Rubio tweeted that Twitter, in banning Trump, would “only stoke new grievances that will end up fueling the very thing they claim to be trying to prevent,” another charge that applies equally to Rubio and his tweets.

Senator Rubio, like Kevin McCarthy, is loath to even nod to the possibility of holding Donald Trump accountable.

We shall see, if and when the Democratic House moves to impeach Donald Trump, what fraction of Republicans acknowledge Trump’s role in delegitimizing and seeking to overturn a free and fair election, which culminated in the attack on the Capitol. I suggest — based on recent history — that there will be no more than a handful.

January 11 updates: David Frum called out Rubio for a hedged and contorted statement on the violence in the senator’s 4-minute “blame-everybody-but-me video” (which I hadn’t seen) that “joined 20 seconds of forthright condemnation to nearly four full minutes of blame shifting and excuse making.” The video consists of shameless grievance-mongering. There are two passing references to Donald Trump, but the principal blame for the attack on the Capitol falls on Trump’s and Rubio’s political opponents.

Jonathan Bernstein weighed in on Republicans’ retreat “to the flimsiest of defenses against impeachment and removal,” defenses that “say nothing about whether the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, and nothing about whether his offenses are so grave that they demand the extraordinary action of impeachment and removal in the last days of his term. Surely that’s what matters, not whether standing up for the republic is divisive or hurts the feelings of those who oppose it.”

(Image: Sky News.)

Democracy, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

As Trump amps up abuses of power, most Republican Senators shelter in place

October 7, 2019 update: Cable news anchors can’t get Repubicans to come on the air to defend Trump.

Michael Calderone of Politico on Twitter.

But when the NBA makes the wrong geopolitical call, watch out.

“The idea of China interfering in the sanctity of the NBA is somehow incredibly offensive to them, whereas the same standard for American elections results in the sound of crickets.” — Jake Tapper in an interview with Politico

Original post:

“This president doesn’t appear to know or care much about the Constitution, especially the limits it puts on his power.

. . .

Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution. Instead, he’s attacking it — by inflating and abusing his powers, ignoring laws he swore to protect and demanding unconstitutional reprisals against anyone who opposes him.” — Doyle McManus, in Sunday morning’s Los Angeles Times

The headline and sub head in Sunday’s print edition conveys the gist of the column — “A constitutional blind eye: Trump neither knows nor respects how our basic law limits his power” — which contrasts the President’s view of his power under Article II with the view of the founders.

McManus doesn’t mention checks and balances — which are referenced throughout the Federalist Papers (including Madison’s No. 51, “The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments“). It turns out that among the most important checks on a president is the Congress, established in Article I of the Constitution.

An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. (Madison, Federalist No. 48.)

As Trump approaches 1,000 days in office (on October 17, 10 days from now), a recurring question has been, When will Congress step up and check the President? An Iowan put the question to Senator Joni Ernst last weekend:

“Where is the line? When are you guys going to say, ‘Enough,’ and stand up and say, ‘You know what? I’m not backing any of this.’ ”

That’s a question for every Republican in the U.S. Senate, almost all of whom — while Mitch McConnell campaigns on a promise not to hold Trump accountable — have responded (as Mara Liasson reported) by “sheltering in place.”

Charlie Cook (who also used the expression, shelter in place) had an answer in July:

“Those who can’t understand why elected Republicans and party officials don’t stand up to Trump seem to miss a point. The survival instinct in humans is a powerful one. In anticipating human behavior, it should always be kept in mind. The track record of what happened to those who did is pretty clear. They lost primaries or chose retirement. Instead, for many pre-tea-party Republicans, the strategy has been to shelter in place. The thinking goes that there is nothing that can be done to stop Hurricane Donald. The key is to survive the storm and be in a position to put the pieces back together and rebuild the party after it has passed. They know that the final edition of Profiles in Courage has already gone to the printer.

Cook references pre-tea-party Republicans, those who (mostly in silence) still embrace conservative principles (who hope to put the pieces back together and rebuild the party post-Trump). That’s not everyone in the Senate, of course:

Ron Johnson exasperated Chuck Todd with his conspiracy-propaganda defense that has found support only in the conservative media bubble and Trump’s tweets. (“Senator Johnson–Senator Johnson, please! Can we please answer the question I asked you instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you are not criticizing him?!”)

And of course Lindsey Graham is determined not to be outdone on any given day by anyone else in the caucus. “If the whistleblower’s allegations are turned into an impeachment article, it’s imperative that the whistleblower be interviewed in public, under oath and cross-examined.”

Most Senate Republicans, however, are in a bunker, because when allies back up Trump, he often pulls the rug out from under them. As Robert Costa and Philip Rucker report, “…few Republican lawmakers have been willing to fully parrot White House talking points because they believe they lack credibility or fret they could be contradicted by new discoveries.”

“Everyone is getting a little shaky at this point,” said Brendan Buck, who was counselor to former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). “Members have gotten out on a limb with this president many times only to have it be cut off by the president. They know he’s erratic, and this is a completely unsteady and developing situation.”

The few who might harbor thoughts of opposing Trump are even less likely to speak out. As former Senator Jeff Flake put it, “There is a concern that he’ll get through it and he’ll exact revenge on those who didn’t stand with him.”

The founders didn’t expect Profiles in Courage. They anticipated men acting badly, but believed that institutional checks would hold. Personal ambition and rival interests, both good motives and bad, were all part of the equation:

“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public.“

They expected personal ambition, “opposite and rival interests,” and perhaps even institutional pride (or, in less positive terms, institutional jealousy) to be incentive enough to check an errant president.

But when Trump holds sway over Republican primary voters, and is ready to exact revenge for disloyalty, personal ambition requires sheltering in place.

Marco Rubio was ambitious. (“And two weeks from tonight, right here in Florida, we are going to send a message loud and clear.  We are going to send a message that the party of Lincoln and Reagan and the presidency of the United States will never be held by a con artist.” Trump beat Rubio by 18 points in the Florida primary.

“Lil’ Marco” is now pretending that Trump’s soliciting foreign help in an American election is just a joke, “just needling the press.”

Ted Cruz, (initially) declined to endorse Donald Trump in 2016 remarking, “History isn’t kind to the man who holds Mussolini’s jacket,” but has come back into the fold of Trump’s Republican Party.

Given this environment, could Republicans break from Trump?

“Nobody wants to be the zebra that strays from the pack and gets gobbled up by the lion,” a former senior administration official said in assessing the current consensus among Senate Republicans. “They have to hold hands and jump simultaneously … Then Trump is immediately no longer president and the power he can exert over them and the punishment he can inflict is, in the snap of a finger, almost completely erased.”

Expecting Republican Senators to “hold hands and jump simultaneously,” between now and November 3, 2020, even as we learn more about Trump’s extortion of Ukraine, is far fetched.

If the story metastasizes far beyond where we are now, might 3 or 4 Republican Senators vote for impeachment? I would regard that as a victory.

Meanwhile, Republican Senators can be expected to fall into 3 camps. From the first camp, we’ll see an avalanche of lies, diversions, attacks on Democrats and the media, and a bottomless narrative of grievance.

From the second camp, we’ll hear tut-tutting and murmurs of disapproval, but the conduct will not rise to the level of impeachment.

And, a third possibility, 1 or 2 or 3 (or …?) Republican Senators will acknowledge that Trump’s misconduct is undeniable and renders him unfit to serve. At least we can hope that this category is not a null set by the time the Senate votes on impeachment.

(Image: the Capitol via wikipedia.)