“Biden was accurate in warning that “those who stormed this Capitol and those who … called on them to do so held a dagger at the throat of America and American democracy.” He needs to keep reminding voters of the real stakes in November 2022 — and 2024. We are fighting, as he said, for “the right to vote, the right to govern ourselves, the right to determine our own destiny.” Republicans, sadly, are willing to jettison all those hallowed principles simply to feed Trump’s insatiable ego.”
In what may be the most powerful speech of his presidency so far, President Biden delivered a searing (and overdue) indictment on Thursday, January 6 of his predecessor — never mentioned by name — for inciting a mob attack on the Capitol exactly a year ago. Biden identified the central truth of the insurrection: “The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election … because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution. He can’t accept he lost.”
That’s exactly right. There was no higher principle at operation on Jan. 6. This was not a battle over tax cuts, abortion, immigration, infrastructure, vaccine mandates or any other policy — none of which former president Donald Trump seems to care much about anyway, save to the extent that they are useful chum to excite his followers into a frenzy. Trump was willing to stage an assault on more than two centuries of democracy in America simply because his all-encompassing ego will not allow him to admit that he was repudiated by more than 81.2 million voters.
And most Republicans, it is now clear, seem just fine with that. A party that once stood for certain principles — lower taxes, traditional values, a strong defense — has been reduced to a cult of personality for a narcissistic television personality. The GOP didn’t even have a policy platform in 2020. What is normally a lengthy document listing positions on issues big and small was reduced to a one-page statement affirming “that the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” Trump-first agenda is more like it. Remarkably enough, Republicans’ desire to cater to the whims of the orange emperor has not lessened in the past year despite his loss of power (and his Twitter account). The Republican National Committee — whose chair, Ronna McDaniel, dropped the “Romney” from her name to appease Trump — even agreed last month to pay up to $1.6 million of the former president’s personal legal bills in investigations of his shady business practices. The probes of Trump by New York prosecutors have nothing to do with his actions in office. But the RNC has become his personal piggy bank. Indeed, the entire Republican Party has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization. You can blame spineless Republican leaders for abasing themselves before one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. But they are just giving their voters what they want. According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s net favorability rating among Republicans declined only slightly over the past year, from 82 percent to 76 percent. But Vice President Mike Pence’s fell off a cliff in January 2021, when he certified Biden’s win — not that he had any other choice. So did then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s, after he condemned Trump’s actions. Pence’s net favorability among Republicans is down to just 28 percent, while McConnell’s rating is 32 points underwater with voters of his party.
In another recent poll from the University of Massachusetts, only 21 percent of Republicans said that Trump’s election defeat was legitimate — even though, as Biden noted Thursday, “93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said it: He lost.” The handful of elected Republicans who actively call out the “big lie” — most prominently Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — have become pariahs in Republican ranks. Meanwhile, Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), who said on Thursday that “we are proud of the work we did on Jan. 6 to make legitimate arguments about election integrity,” remains a Republican in good standing.
I had hoped that Trump’s role in inciting a mob attack on Congress might have shaken his hold on the Republican Party — that it might have led Republicans to reconsider the perilous path they are on. But no. A year later, Trump’s attack on democracy has emerged not as a dealbreaker for most Republicans but as a deal-clincher. Forced to choose between Trump and the Constitution, most Republicans choose Trump.
Shortly after the November election, a “senior Republican official” under cover of anonymity explained why Republicans were refusing to admit the obvious — Trump had lost. “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” this Republican said. You would think that the downside would be readily apparent a year after lawmakers had to run for their lives from a #MAGA mob ransacking the Capitol. And yet the Republican Party continues to humor Trump even as he has turned increasingly authoritarian.
Biden was accurate in warning that “those who stormed this Capitol and those who … called on them to do so held a dagger at the throat of America and American democracy.” He needs to keep reminding voters of the real stakes in November 2022 — and 2024. We are fighting, as he said, for “the right to vote, the right to govern ourselves, the right to determine our own destiny.” Republicans, sadly, are willing to jettison all those hallowed principles simply to feed Trump’s insatiable ego.
(The author is a columnist with Washington Post)
