Coop Scoop: "Legitimate Political Discourse"

The incendiary RNC statement has polarized Republicans

To fully appreciate this edition, please properly prepare. 

As we are about to engage in legitimate political discourse, you must not only marshal your arguments and debate skills but you must also gather up your brass knuckles, spears, tazers, stun guns, bear spray, hammers, tire irons, fire extinguishers, zip ties, body armor, pipes, pipe bombs and a couple of hand guns.

According to what is possibly the most extremist statement ever issued by a major American political party, the RNC voted last Friday to now classify the events of January 6, 2020 as “legitimate political discourse.”

 By that logic, perhaps a small armed vanguard actually seizing state power might simply be called “winning a political argument.”  The RNC also moved to formally censure the two Republicans who sit on the January 6 Select Committee, Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.

The startling, openly insurrectionary vote by the near 200 members of what is essentially the Republican central committee, set off a shock wave inside the party, widening some cracks that have recently appeared in the appearance of a Trump-unified party.

By early this week, the RNC vote was rebuked by more than 100 big name Republicans (including much of what is left of the Reaganoids), it drew a rebuke from no less than the Grim Reaper himself, Mitch McConnell, who reminded everybody that January 6 was, indeed, a “violent insurrection.”  Other top Senate Repubs like John Cornyn also offered criticism of the scolding dished out to Cheney and Kinzinger.

The House leadership, meanwhile, seemed to lean much more in Trump’s direction and Speaker McCarthy weighed demands from the Gaetz-Greene Extremes to actually banish the two dissident Republicans from the party caucus.

Add to this the high-profile statement by Mike Pence last week defending his refusal to go along with Trump’s coup plans for January 6 and we are now faced with this burning question: In this run-up to dramatic and historic mid-terms, is the Republican Party actually splitting apart?

The answer: Yes and no and probably eventually yes.

Driving these new, somewhat frantic and frazzled divisions are a combined force of the unexpected efficiency and aggressiveness of the January 6 committee and a series of bombshell revelations on the one hand and on the other, the accelerated craziness and extremism of Trump.

It had been conventional wisdom that voters would ignore the January 6 investigation and that its findings would appeal only to the political choir of liberals and Democrats.

That calculation is changing. The revelations that the Trump White House was considering everything from the Insurrection Act to having the military seize ballot boxes to calling in the NSA to provide intel on American voters, to months of plotting by a cabal of Republicans and allied neo-fascists to overturn the 2020 election could not and cannot be ignored. Add to that what we have learned about Trump tearing up official records and stashing 15 boxes of White House docs in a closet in Mar-a-Lago.

Some pundits might not be taking the work of the committee very seriously.  Not so for Donald Trump. The defeated ex-president, also under mounting law enforcement pressure in Georgia and New York, is clearly trying to beat back the work of the committee.  That’s why he suddenly declared the quiet part out loud ten days ago when he very clearly declared that he had been plotting to “overturn” the election. Not at all a lame way to defuse the committee work.

Trump’s confession had a strategic side to it, believe it or not. Precisely worried that the dirt uncovered by the January 6 committee might start getting the attention of more Republicans, the Great Orange One raised the stakes; his “confession” was an all-in, with me or against me move

There are now two Trump-imposed pre-requisites for being considered a Republican in good standing and, much more importantly, for being a Republican candidate worthy of a Trump endorsement.

While till recently the price of admission was to agree that the 2020 election was stolen, you must now also agree that the mob riot on January 6 was actually a pro-democracy peaceful demonstration staged against The Insurrection of November 3rd  i.e. the rigged election of Joe Biden.

Trump took out his rhetorical Sharpie and with his revision of January 6, drew a bright line that he hopes will separate Real Trump Republicans from RINOS, traitors, and softies. He was the force behind that eye-popping RNC statement that he clearly hoped would snap the Republican world back into absolutely loyalty.

For sake of convenience, let’s call the “other side” in this Republican dispute, the McConnell Gang. Mitch, and probably a great majority of sitting Republican senators would very much like the whole January 6 thing (and for the matter, Donald Trump,) to just go away.   

Mitch and his pals have an election to win in November and they would much rather spend their time beating up a faltering Joe Biden and talking about crime and inflation, rather than looking backward with the Man-Baby and whining about a stolen election and playing footsie with the Proud Boys.

The toughest Republican statement on the insurrectionary RNC vote came, rather pointedly, from Senator Mitt Romney, the uncle of RNC chair Rona Romney McDaniel.

(Just for the record, let’s note that Miss Romney McDaniel, as she was legally called, excised her family last name once she was seated as RNC Chief.  She apparently was fine erasing the name of a legacy political dynasty just to please Trump).

Moreover, the McConnell Gang rightfully fears the sort of candidates being encouraged and supported by Trump in this spring and summer Republican primaries. “A very unfortunate decision by the RNC and a very unfortunate statement put out as well. Nothing could be further from the truth than to consider the attack on the seat of democracy as legitimate political discourse,” said Sen. Romney.  Even Super Slime Lindsay Graham mumbled a criticism of the RNC move saying it was leading the party in “the wrong direction.”  A dozen Republican senators contacted by Politico all condemned the RNC statement (except for the gentleman Senator from the Great State of Mendacity, Ron Paul).

This Republican food fight comes at a time when the GOP was feeling confident that it would deliver a crushing blow to Democrats come November. But a near consensus of Republican operatives say, at least in private, that the RNC’s redefinition of January 6 along with Trump now owning the plot that led to the siege, plus whatever new loads of Trump trash to be publicized by January 6 committee hearings in April or May, will absolutely cut into Republican gains in the fall.

As Matt Continetti, the former editor of the Free Beacon, a conservative website, is quoted saying in The New York Times, “Any minute Republicans spend re-litigating 2020 or downplaying the events of Jan. 6, 2021, is an opportunity lost.”

That said, the most vocal and strident members of the House are, predictably, doubling down in support of Trump and his hard line.  Tuesday morning the Republican House caucus met behind closed doors to plot strategy and to shore up their pro-Trump position.

It appears that Leader [sic] McCarthy came up with what he thinks is a “compromise” that would not further enflame divisions.  He beat back the demand that Kinzinger and Cheney be formally expelled from the party.  Instead, the caucus decided instead its new goal was to make sure Cheney did not win re-election in Wyoming.

“People want them kicked out,” said Georgia’s Qanon Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. But, she added, “it’d be really ridiculous to kick them out of the conference, but not work hard to make sure Liz Cheney is defeated.”

OK. So where does this leave us? Is Trump really sliding and did that RNC vote cast him more in the shade?  Well, I am not going to make any predictions on this score.  I will say, however, that the split is real and might, I repeat MIGHT, have greater consequences.

No question that this Republican division can best be understood by seeing which constituencies support either side.  There is no question that what I am calling the McConnell Gang – Mitch, most of the GOP Senators, some other elected officials, a few House members and former exiled Republican officials—are precisely the faction most distant from base Republican voters. And that’s always a perilous place to be. They might represent a more rational position but it is hardly a majority view inside the party.

Trump, by contrast, is the hero of the masses, he is the leader if not the idol of the activist and activated Republican base voters. 

How this shakes out in the long run, of course, will depend a great deal on the outcome of the midterms.  If the Red Wave materializes, the Trump faction will be victorious and the course of the GOP will be set for some time to come.  If, conversely, the GOP performance falls short in the fall because moderate and independent voters have been turned off by Trump’s single-minded nuttiness and his hand-picked candidates and/or by the RNC’s Stalinist turn, it could easily sink any Trump plans for 2024.

One other possible pitfall for Trump:  Now that he has successfully polarized the party along pro and anti insurrectionary lines, it is not fully obvious just how integral Trump is to Trumpism and the broader insurgent movement. That insurgency now is real and it is much stronger than a year ago.  Trump has already ruffled a few feathers among his base by suddenly becoming a vax advocate.

As Lider Maximo of a movement he has now pitted against the establishment of both parties, and as his movement grows, he will be closely scrutinized by his followers. It’s not impossible that down the road his own movement jettisons him as a RINO. Please remember the case of suck folks as Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan. For now, that’s a stretch. But stranger things have happened, like Trump getting elected in the first place.

Perhaps, the most unsavory aspect of this Republican squabble has been the absolute, stone-cold, refusal by the Biden administration and the Democratic Party to intervene and make the most out of all this.  The party seems to be hiding under the same table which has given shelter to Merrick Garland. If only he had the courage of a Liz Cheney!

The fabulous work of the January 6 committee, something totally unexpected and unlike most other congressional investigations, has laid a rock solid groundwork to go after Trump and the Republican leadership (i.e. both factions) for pushing the country toward more political violence.  If and when the Democrats do get shellacked in November, we will have plenty ways of understanding what happened.

There’s very little suspense left in the January 6 investigation. For anybody who wants to know what happened, we pretty much already know all the grotesque basics.  The question is: Anybody gonna do anything about it? ++

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