Tag Archives: Sedition

Setting the Stage for a Future Coup

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Two years after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, while we wait for more conspirators to be indicted, it’s worth considering why the coup failed and how a future coup might succeed.

Fintan O’Toole writes for the Irish Times and teaches at Princeton. His article for The New York Review of Books is called “Dress Rehearsal”. Here are some selections (the whole article is worth reading — it’s behind a relatively porous paywall):

To understand the attempted coup that culminated in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, it is useful to go back to D___ T___’s immediate response to the election he actually won, in 2016. The head of his transition team, Chris Christie, then governor of New Jersey, presented T___ with a detailed plan for the transfer of power to his incoming administration. It was literally trashed. As Christie recalled…  “All thirty binders were tossed in a T____ Tower dumpster, never to be seen again.”

T____ didn’t want an orderly transition to his own presidency, let alone to Joe Biden’s. To a raging narcissist a plan is an impertinence, a Lilliputian restraint on the inspired instincts of a giant. But for a seditious conspiracy (or what the House inquiry has characterized as an “insurrection” in its recommendation of charges that should be brought against T____) to succeed, a plan is imperative. T____’s fundamental problem was that his putative second transition was every bit as cack-handed as his first.

Two years on from January 6, the most important question about the coup is why it failed. Or to put it another way: If you were planning a future coup, what could you learn from this one? From the evidence accumulated by the House of Representatives inquiry into the attack, two aspects of this failure are obvious. Too many Republican officials in crucial states refused to subvert their own elections. And what we might call the institutional right—D____ T____’s appointees to the judiciary and the Department of Justice—did not support the conspiracy. Yet the most important factor may be one that is much more intangible. At its heart was T____’s political persona…..

In his 2004 book T____: How to Get Rich, the ersatz mogul set out his rules for success. One was “Be a good storyteller. People like stories, and they’ll remember them.” Another was:

In business—every business—the bottom line is understanding the process. If you don’t understand the process, you’ll never reap the rewards of the process…. Part of the process is doing your homework. You have to know what you’re getting into first.

In the business of staging a coup, T____ violated both these rules. He never managed to settle on a good story. And he did not do enough homework to understand and master the process of retaining the presidency after a clear electoral defeat.

A coup, in this context, does not mean tanks on the streets, helicopter gunships strafing public buildings, thousands of people rounded up by soldiers, and a junta of generals or colonels addressing the nation on TV. On the contrary, the story that needed to be told by the plotters of 2020–2021 was not the overthrow of democracy, but its defense. T____, as his chief of staff and co-conspirator Mark Meadows put it …, was merely seeking “to uphold the democratic process.” In any conceivable future coup, this will again be the necessary narrative. We won, they are stealing our victory, we need to take extraordinary measures to defend democracy.

It is important for actual democrats to understand this. Dark fantasies about martial law and mass repression may deliver a certain masochistic thrill. Yet the lesson from the events of two years ago is that, spectacularly horrifying as it was, the attack on the Capitol was not the main event. It was a poorly conceived and (by T____) badly led reaction to the failure of the much more feasible coup—which T____ just might have pulled off in November or December 2020. He lost that opportunity because he could not create the necessary heroic drama—the one in which he was not sullenly subverting the presidential election but selflessly upholding its real results.

In fashioning of this drama, T____ had one great advantage—five years of preparation. He had, from the start of his run for the Republican nomination, insisted that “our system is absolutely, totally rigged.” Before both the 2016 and the 2020 elections, he refused, on this basis, to commit to accepting the declared results. There was never any real doubt that if he lost in 2020, he would refuse to concede defeat. We know from the House committee hearings that T____’s announcement on election night that “frankly, we did win this election. . . . We want all voting to stop” had been planned well in advance…. On election day, T____ discussed … an earlier memo [that] laid out plans for the president to demand that only the votes tallied by the end of that day should count.

This was the essence of the coup. What is remarkable, however, is the absence of any real plan to enforce it. Here is the first of T____’s misunderstandings about the nature of his own power. It was not feasible for any president simply to order all voting to stop. What was important to the plot was that, having laid down this marker, T____ and his fellow plotters follow it up by creating and sustaining a story in which any vote not counted by his arbitrary deadline was illegitimate. They failed to do this because T____ stupidly believed in his own fictional creation—the mogul from The Apprentice whose orders will be obeyed unquestioningly by subordinates. It is clear from his subsequent reactions that T____ genuinely believed that those minions would include his attorney general, William Barr, his own federal judicial appointees, and the Supreme Court on which he had created a solid right-wing majority.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that this institutional obstruction left T____ with no options other than the final desperate maneuvers of January 6, when he tried to get Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election results and sent an armed mob to attack the Capitol and intimidate the members of Congress. To understand what Trump could have done instead, it is necessary to revisit a long meeting at the White House on the evening and night of December 18, 2020. This episode is easy to dismiss because it was described as “unhinged” and because the proposals aired at it were called “nuts” by [January 6th committee witnesses]. These characterizations are accurate. Yet the meeting matters for two reasons. The first is that it immediately preceded T____’s fateful decision to summon his followers to Washington on January 6. The other is that one of the ideas put forward at this meeting would be of great interest to any future conspirator….

Yet somewhere amid this craziness was the nearest thing the whole plot ever got to a potentially viable plan to overturn the election. Essentially, T___ would appoint [Michael] Flynn as [the leader] of a military-led operation to oversee a hand recount of votes in the six most narrowly contested states:

General Flynn drafted a beautiful operational plan for such a mission. One signature from the President and the whole thing would roll. The teams would be created from the right National Guard Units, the right directives to each…

[Sidney] Powell, meanwhile, would be appointed as special counsel, with powers to seek out and prosecute those responsible for the gigantic electoral fraud….

The most basic requirement was to create a public narrative in which [a] foreign power was identified [as behind the fraud]. Since there was no actual evidence, the plotters were free to invent whatever tale they wanted. Given that T____ had decided months before the election that he was going to claim victory regardless of the actual votes, there was plenty of time to prepare a dossier full of charts and figures and fake “intelligence.” (Think Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.) But the conspirators were like a dog chasing a flock of pigeons—they ran so excitedly after so many targets that they could never catch hold of any particular one….

Having seized control of the voting machines through some kind of military task force, there would then be a live TV event in which all of the paper ballots in the six most contested states would be counted in front of the cameras…. By appearing to commit to conceding defeat if no discrepancies were found, T____ could pose, as he had to do if a coup were to succeed, as the defender of American democracy. It goes without saying that, under Flynn’s watchful eye, discrepancies would have been found … just enough in each state to flip the election.”

Most importantly, there would be a public drama, an elaborate spectacle of “democracy” in action. It is not hard to imagine how T____s enablers in the media would sell this show: Why are the Democrats afraid to see what the paper ballots say? The mechanics of this performance remain obscure. How were “discrepancies” to be created? What would the Supreme Court have done? To have a chance of success, the plan would surely have to have been put into effect much earlier—well before the Electoral College met on December 14 to confirm Biden’s victory.

Yet [the plan had] the germ of the right idea. The best way to steal a presidential election would indeed be through a staged display of democratic process backed by elaborate precooked “evidence” of foreign conspiracy and amplified by Fox News, social media campaigns, and other media. This is the upside-down shape of a successful American coup. Democracy is destroyed by the enactment of its protection. Conspirators succeed by foiling a “conspiracy.”

The author then discusses the former president’s violent rhetoric and the events of January 6th.This is how the article ends:

In the 187 minutes between the end of T____’s speech [on January 6th] and the time he finally called off the mob, he seems to have lost all sense of the relationship between words and actions, between incitement and murder. He sat at the head of the table in the private dining room off the Oval Office watching the mayhem on Fox News. His reaction to the chants of “Hang Mike Pence” was relayed by [Mark] Meadows to [Pat] Cipollone: “You heard him, Pat, he thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.” Around the time that members of Pence’s security detail were making what they thought might be their last calls to their families, T____ sent an incendiary signal to the attackers, tweeting, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.”

T____, at that point, was implicitly providing a mandate for murder. But this could no longer really be called an attempted coup. Neither T____ nor his fellow plotters had the slightest idea what they would do after Pence, and presumably members of Congress, of both parties, were murdered. This was not a plan for the seizing and holding of power. It was a dark fantasy of personal revenge. Oddly, T____sent that tweet at the moment he really accepted that he was a loser—that unbearable realization made it necessary that someone be sacrificed on the altar of his humiliation. When even that became impossible, there was nothing left to do but cancel the whole show.

If it happens again, it will probably not happen like this. The pilot episode was a disaster because it had no coherent script, too many ham actors, too weak a grasp on the difference between gestures and consequences. But there is much to learn from it. Next time, if there is one, the plot will be much tighter, the action less outlandish, the logistics much better prepared, the director more competent. And the show will be called Defending Democracy.

Last Wednesday and the Grotesque Old Party

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Paul Krugman’s last two columns dealt with the insurrection and the Republican Party. I’ve taken apart “This Putsch Was Decades in the Making” and “Appeasement Got Us Where We Are” and rearranged some of the pieces:

So, is it finally OK to use the F-word?

One shouldn’t use the term “fascist” lightly. . . Mitch McConnell’s brand of politics has, in my view, greatly damaged America; but cynical legislative maneuvers aren’t the same thing as threatening and encouraging violence, and I wouldn’t call McConnell a fascist.

Dxxxx Txxxx, however, is indeed a fascist — an authoritarian willing to use violence to achieve his racial nationalist goals. So are many of his supporters. If you had any doubts about that, Wednesday’s attack on Congress should have ended them.

And if history teaches us one lesson about dealing with fascists, it is the futility of appeasement. Giving in to fascists doesn’t pacify them, it just encourages them to go further.

********

One striking aspect of the Capitol Hill putsch was that none of the rioters’ grievances had any basis in reality.

No, the election wasn’t stolen — there is no evidence of significant electoral fraud. No, Democrats aren’t part of a satanic pedophile conspiracy. No, they aren’t radical Marxists — even the party’s progressive wing would be considered only moderately left of center in any other Western democracy.

All the rage is based on lies. But what’s almost as striking as the fantasies of the rioters is how few leading Republicans have been willing, despite the violence and desecration, to tell the MAGA mob that their conspiracy theories are false.

Bear in mind that Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, and two-thirds of his colleagues voted against accepting the Electoral College results even after the riot. (McCarthy then shamelessly decried “division”, saying that “we must call on our better angels.”)

Or consider the behavior of leading Republicans who aren’t usually considered extremists. On Sunday Senator Rob Portman declared that we need to “restore confidence in the integrity of our electoral system.” Portman isn’t stupid; he has to know that the only reason so many people doubt the election results is that members of his party deliberately fomented that doubt. But he’s still keeping up the pretense.

And the cynicism and cowardice of leading Republicans is, I would argue, the most important cause of the nightmare now enveloping our nation.

********

Of course we need to understand the motives of our homegrown enemies of democracy. In general, political scientists find — not surprisingly, given America’s history — that racial antagonism is the best predictor of willingness to countenance political violence. Anecdotally, personal frustrations — often involving social interactions, not “economic anxiety” — also seem to drive many extremists.

But neither racism nor widespread attraction to conspiracy theories is new in our political life. The worldview described in Richard Hofstadter’s classic 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” is barely distinguishable from QAnon beliefs today.

There’s only so much to be gained from interviewing red-hatted guys in diners; there have always been people like that. If there are or seem to be more such people than in the past, it probably has less to do with intensified grievances than with outside encouragement.

For the big thing that has changed since Hofstadter wrote is that one of our major political parties has become willing to tolerate and, indeed, feed right-wing political paranoia.

This coddling of the crazies was, at first, almost entirely cynical. When the G.O.P. began moving right in the 1970s its true agenda was mainly economic — what its leaders wanted, above all, were business deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. But the party needed more than plutocracy to win elections, so it began courting working-class whites with what amounted to thinly disguised racist appeals. . . .

But it’s not just about race. Since Ronald Reagan, the G.O.P. has been closely tied to the hardline Christian right. Anyone shocked by the prevalence of insane conspiracy theories in 2020 should look back to “The New World Order,” published by Reagan ally Pat Robertson in 1991, which saw America menaced by an international cabal of Jewish bankers, Freemasons and occultists. Or they should check out a 1994 video promoted by Jerry Falwell Sr. called “The Clinton Chronicles,” which portrayed Bill Clinton as a drug smuggler and serial killer.

What has changed since then? For a long time Republican elites imagined that they could exploit racism and conspiracy theorizing while remaining focused on a plutocratic agenda. But with the rise first of the Tea Party, then of Dxxxx Txxxx, the cynics found that the crazies were actually in control, and that they wanted to destroy democracy, not cut tax rates on capital gains.

And Republican elites have, with few exceptions, accepted their new subservient status.

********

Consider a few milestones on the way to the sacking of the Capitol.

One big step happened in February, when every Republican senator other than Mitt Romney voted against convicting the president on impeachment charges despite clear evidence of his guilt. Susan Collins famously justified her vote by hoping that Txxxx had “learned his lesson.” What he actually learned was that he could abuse his power with impunity.

Another big step came in the spring, when armed protesters, with Txxxx’s encouragement, menaced Michigan authorities over Covid-19 restrictions. That dress rehearsal for this week’s violence drew some tut-tutting from Republican politicians, but no serious pushback. Indeed, one of the leaders in these events — who was also involved in Wednesday’s rioting — is in line to become co-chair of the Michigan G.O.P.

Again, the lesson was clear: Right-wing activists can get away with threatening elected officials, even when this includes brandishing weapons in public spaces.

Then came Txxxx’s unprecedented refusal to accept electoral defeat. Many Republicans joined him in trying to reject the will of the voters . . .

But even those who didn’t actively join his attempts to stage a coup tried to let Txxxx and his followers down easy. McConnell waited more than a month before accepting Joe Biden as president-elect. One senior Republican said to The Washington Post, “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” Well, now we know the answer.

********

What happened on Wednesday? A Txxxxist attack during the confirmation of Biden’s victory was completely predictable. So why was security so lax? Why were there hardly any arrests?

What we know suggests that the people who were in charge of protecting Congress failed to do so because they didn’t want to be seen treating the MAGA mob as the danger it was. . . .

And even if the inauguration goes off smoothly, the threat will remain. If you imagine that the people who stormed the Capitol will just go away once Biden is installed in the White House, you’re delusional.

********

You might have hoped that a significant number of sane Republican politicians would finally say that enough is enough, and break with their extremist allies. But Txxxx’s party didn’t balk at his corruption and abuse of power; it stood by him when he refused to accept electoral defeat; and some of its members are responding to a violent attack on Congress by complaining about their loss of Twitter followers.

And there’s no reason to believe that the atrocities yet to come — for there will be more atrocities — will make a difference. The G.O.P. has reached the culmination of its long journey away from democracy, and it’s hard to see how it can ever be redeemed.

********

So what can be done? It’s time to stop appeasing the fascists among us. Law enforcement should seek to arrest as many of the participants in Wednesday’s attack as possible . . . and anyone who tries to violently interfere with the transfer of power. . .

Finally, there needs to be an accounting for whatever crimes took place during the past four years — and does anyone doubt that Txxxx allies and associates engaged in criminal acts? Don’t say that we should look forward, not back; accountability for past actions will be crucial if we want the future to be better.

Appeasement is what got us to where we are. It has to stop, now.

How To Begin Healing and Moving On

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Republicans claim to be the party of morality and personal responsibility, yet Republican members of Congress are already insisting that Democrats let bygones be bygones. They say that holding our criminal president accountable for the insurrection by removing him from office would only antagonize the rabid, radical right, i.e. millions of Republican voters, which would lead to more violence. Fortunately, a few Congressional Republicans have announced they support impeachment, not appeasement.

Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post argues that there are several ways to unify the nation and begin healing:

The furniture the seditionists smashed in the Capitol has not yet been repaired. The trauma inflicted on those who experienced the event will not vanish for months or years. . . . And neither President Txxxx nor a single Republican lawmaker who held aloft the sedition banner in Congress by objecting to electoral votes has apologized. Nevertheless, Republicans are calling for unity and demanding healing, which entails “moving on” and forgetting about impeachment. . . .

Sorry, it does not work that way. Healing requires accountability and remorse from those who attacked our democracy, stormed the Capitol (or incited, funded or supported the mob) and set out to overthrow our democracy. The culprits do not get to set the timeline for reconciliation before they can be held responsible for their participation in an attempted coup.

Lots of things would be unifying or provide healing. Let’s start with these:

  • The House and Senate could unanimously affirm there was no irregularity or fraud in the election that would have changed the outcome of the presidential vote one iota.

  • The House could impeach Trump, and the Senate could come back in session to hold a trial and remove him swiftly.

  • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who pulled his caucus over the cliff in the desperate hope to maintain the Big Lie and cater to Trump, could resign.

  • A combination of Democrats and all Republicans who voted to certify the electoral college results in the House and Senate could expel or censure members who objected to certification. As my colleague Michael Scherer writes, “The central question now hovering over America’s political landscape is whether one of its two major parties will allow itself to function as an extension of QAnon and other online conspiracy theory movements that have taken hold with a vocal segment of the GOP, or if it can emerge from the Txxxx era as a potential governing coalition built around ideas and some shared agreement on facts.” This action would help settle that question.

  • Corporate donors could permanently cut off support for anyone who objected to the electoral votes, an attack on our democracy.

  • Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms could volunteer to make entirely transparent how they “curate content” and how their “algorithms decide what speech to amplify,” as YaĂ«l Eisenstat, a former Facebook executive, suggests. We should find out how they “nudge users towards the content that will keep them engaged … [and] connect users to hate groups, who recommend conspiracy theorists.” The companies could also agree to follow the guidelines recommended by the Stop Hate for Profit campaign headed by the Anti-Defamation League and major corporate advertisers.

  • A nonpartisan commission could determine the extent to which state and federal law enforcement has been infiltrated by adherents of violent extremist groups. (The Post reports, “At least two U.S. Capitol Police officers have been suspended and more than a dozen others are under investigation for suspected involvement with or inappropriate support for the Wednesday demonstration that turned into a deadly riot at the Capitol, according to two congressional officials briefed on the developments.”)

  • Right-wing media outlets, pundits, talk-show personalities and TV hosts who perpetrated the lie that there was widespread election fraud could retract their statements and affirm there is no factual basis for these assertions.

  • The voters in the 18 states whose attorneys general filed a brief to throw out other states’ electoral votes could recall or vote out these officials.

That should be enough to get us started. Beyond that, there are many good ideas for enhancing civics education, media literacy and access to voting on a permanent basis (e.g., pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act; make available universal, secure voting by mail). You can never have too much healing.

Unquote.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee today released a 70-page document, “Materials in Support of H. Res. 24, Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. It says “Impeachment is not a punishment of prior wrongs, but a protection against future evils” (which would include Donnie being president again).

The third-ranking House Republican, the ultra-conservative Liz Cheney, released a statement:

Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.

I will vote to impeach the President.

Also today:

The acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Michael Sherwin, has indicated that many amid the hundreds of pro-Txxxx rioters who violently invaded the US Capitol  . . .  are suspected in a “mind-blowing” range of crimes, including felony murder and sedition and conspiracy.

There are at least 160 federal criminal cases open. [He said the FBI and other agencies] are ready to track down individuals all across the country, apprehend them wherever possible and arrest hundreds if not thousands of people.

“The range of criminal conduct was unmatched,” Sherwin said. He warned lawbreakers “You will be charged and you will be found.”

Yes, let the healing begin!

Another Republican Draws the Line

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A small number of Republicans have condemned the attack on the Capitol and the lies that led up to it, but as far as a I know, not a single Republican politician who claimed the election was stolen has apologized and admitted the election was fair. If any of them really wanted to unify the nation, that’s what they’d need to do.

Still, it’s heartening to hear that some Republicans have had enough. Politico describes one:

A top Republican congressional aide is resigning over his party’s support for President Dxxxx Txxxx’s bid to overturn the 2020 election after it fueled deadly riots at the Capitol.

In a scathing resignation letter obtained by POLITICO, Jason Schmid, a longtime senior House Armed Services Committee staffer, slammed the GOP members of the panel who objected to President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win, particularly after a mob incited by Txxxx stormed the Capitol last Wednesday and left five people dead.

“Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms,” Schmid wrote in a letter addressed to the committee’s top Republican. “Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the republic.”

That included 13 members of the Armed Services Committee, where Schmid has worked for four and a half years as a top policy staffer. The panel’s incoming top Republican, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, was also among that group.

Ultimately, 138 House Republicans — more than half the GOP Conference — voted against certifying Biden’s Electoral College votes from Arizona, Pennsylvania or both states based on unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud that were parroted for months by Txxxx and his allies.

The full text of Schmid’s letter:

Ranking Member Rogers and Members of the House Armed Services Committee,

All who serve this nation swear an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee have led Congressional efforts to defend the nation and its Constitutional principles from foreign enemies since the establishment of the committee. Year after year, under Republican and Democratic Chairs, the committee has set aside factious contemporary events in the name of national defense. This is a legacy that I am extremely proud to have supported.

The sad, incontrovertible truth is that the people who laid siege to the Capitol were and continue to be domestic enemies of the Constitution of the United States. A poisonous lie that the election was illegitimate and should be overturned inspired so called “patriots” to share common cause with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists to attack the seat of American government. Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms. Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the Republic.

The decision to vote to set aside legitimate electors harmed the ability of every service member, intelligence officer, and diplomat to defend the nation and advance American interests. How are they to effectively defend American democratic ideals when the entire world saw so many members disregard those same ideals for cynical political purposes? Regardless of the motivations behind the vote, these members bear the consequences that the men and women in harm’s way will face for many years to come. I cannot imagine any series of events more damaging to the already fragile US led post-World War II order that has brought more peace and prosperity to the world than at any other time in history. These self-inflicted wounds are a gift to autocrats who seek a diminished America and are fundamentally inconsistent with the responsibility to provide for the common defense. Foreign intelligence services were likely on the scene and will certainly capitalize on the crisis it has caused – our people will pay a steep price. Congressional enablers of this mob have made future foreign conflict more likely, not less.

Going forward, the Committee must play a role in the accounting of this horrible chapter in our history. It is very disturbing that currently serving members of the armed forces participated in this. It is vitally important that the Committee hold the Department of Defense accountable for bringing any participants to justice. These extremist influences are a grave threat to our ability to defend the nation, and they must be expelled from the force immediately. I deeply regret some members may no longer have the credibility needed to accomplish this work.

All of our words and actions in the coming weeks and days will reveal those who believe in defending the Constitution, and those who stand only for self-interest and sectarianism. There can be no reconciliation and healing without accountability. While it is my hope the Committee finds a way yet again to legislate in a bipartisan way for the men and women in uniform in the 117th Congress and beyond, the failure of so many Republican members of the Committee to put the nation ahead of electoral politics compels my resignation from the staff. It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve the men and women in uniform, their families, and the civilians who also serve the Nation. I am proud of the things we have accomplished on their behalf, and the work we have done to strengthen national defense.

In Service, Jason Schmid

It’s Time To Be Divisive

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Deutsche Bank announced it will no longer do business with our criminal president. It’s a divisive decision, creating a division between their business and one of their customers. A number of big corporations have decided to divide themselves from Republican lawmakers who rejected the presidential election. They’re no longer giving them money for their political campaigns. Sometimes we need to draw clear lines between us and them. From Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times:

The Republican Party has devised its response to the push to impeach the president over his role in the attack on the Capitol last week, and it is so cynical as to shock the conscience.

“Now the Democrats are going to try to remove the president from office just seven days before he is set to leave anyway,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who voted with 146 other Republicans in Congress not to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. “I do not see how this unifies the country.”

The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, also said that impeaching the president “will only divide our country more.”

“As leaders, we must call on our better angels and refocus our efforts on working directly for the American people,” McCarthy said in a statement given two days after he also voted not to accept the results of a free and fair election in which his favored candidate lost. . . .

I’m reminded, here, of one particular passage from Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 address at Cooper Union in Manhattan, in which he criticized the political brinkmanship of Southern elites who blamed their Northern opponents for their own threats to break the union over slavery.

But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

There are a handful of Senate Republicans, like Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who are open to impeachment. But much of the Republican response is exactly this kind of threat: If you hold President Trump accountable for his actions, then we won’t help you unify the country.

Or, as another Republican, Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, said on Twitter,

Those calling for impeachment or invoking the 25th Amendment in response to President Trump’s rhetoric this week are themselves engaging in intemperate and inflammatory language and calling for action that is equally irresponsible and could well incite further violence.

These cries of divisiveness aren’t just the crocodile tears of bad-faith actors. They serve a purpose, which is to pre-emptively blame Democrats for the Republican partisan rancor that will follow after Joe Biden is inaugurated next week. It is another way of saying that they, meaning Democrats, shot first, so we, meaning Republicans, are absolved of any responsibility for our actions. If Democrats want some semblance of normalcy — if they want to be able to govern — then the price for Republicans is impunity for Trump.

House Democrats have already introduced their resolution to impeach the president, formally charging President Trump with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the attack on the Capitol. There is still a ways to go in this process, but it is a stronger start than I expected. But there may still be some hesitation about taking the most aggressive stance, as evidenced by Majority Whip James Clyburn’s proposal to hold off on a trial until after the first 100 days of the Biden administration.

This would be a mistake.

There is no way past this crisis — and yes, we are living through a crisis — except through it. The best way to push forward is as aggressively as possible. Anything less sends the signal that this moment isn’t as urgent as it actually is. And as we move closer to consequences for those responsible, we should continue to ignore the cries that accountability is “divisive.” Not because they’re false, but because they’re true.

Accountability is divisive. That’s the point. If there is a faction of the Republican Party that sees democracy itself as a threat to its power and influence, then it has to be cut off from the body politic. It needs to be divided from the rest of us, lest it threaten the integrity of the American republic more than it already has. Marginalizing that faction — casting Txxxx and Txxxxism into the ash heap of history — will be divisive, but it is the only choice we have.

This does not mean we must cast out the 74 million Americans who voted for the president, but it does mean we must repudiate the lies, cruelty and cult of personality on which Txxxx built his movement. It means Republicans have to acknowledge the truth — that Joe Biden won in a free and fair election — and apologize to their voters and to the country for helping to stoke the madness that struck at the Capitol.

The alternative is a false unity that leaves the wound of last Wednesday to fester until the infection gets even worse than it already is.