McConnell Has Again Betrayed the Country
Partisan and opportunistic accommodation must not stand.
Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed the 45th president. I take this occasion to beat a certain horse, perhaps for the last time.
As I have written before (in this newsletter, here, and here), on February 13, 2021, McConnell delivered a blistering condemnation of the 45th president. He did so, however, after having voted to acquit the 45th president for the high crime and misdemeanor that constituted the article of impeachment for which he was tried. McConnell’s stated reason for his vote was that a former president – no longer subject to removal – is no longer properly convicted following impeachment. The other penalty, disqualification from ever holding office again, did not move McConnell to take the appropriate vote and to use his considerable influence to convince more of his Republican colleagues to do likewise.
On February 14, 2021, I posted on Facebook a Congressional resolution of censure that I had drafted. I drew directly from McConnell’s post-acquittal-vote speech. It was my conviction that, in the absence of a Senate impeachment conviction, it would be urgent to get Congress’s condemnation of the 45th president on the official record.
Perhaps I overstate the impact such a resolution would have had. Perhaps I do not.
Here again is that draft resolution:
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated on February 13, “There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of” January 6;
Whereas, the events to which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell referred were, in his words, “a disgrace” during which “American Citizens”:
“attacked their own government”
“used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like”
“beat and bloodied our own police”
“stormed the Senate floor”
“tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House”
“built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, former President Trump incited these acts by having to the rioters “fed wild falsehoods…because he was angry he had lost an election” and that his “actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel stated, “The people that stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president” and that “having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, the incitement encompassed “the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe, the increasingly wild myths – myths about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen, some secret coup by our now-president”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, the mob acted upon “an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence actually began” and that the “mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name…carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “It was obvious that only President Trump could end this” and “[h]e was the only one who could” and “[f]ormer aides publicly begged him to do so” and “[l]oyal allies frantically called the administration”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “The president did not act swiftly” and “did not do his job” and “didn't take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored” and “[i]nstead, according to public reports, he watched television happily…as the chaos unfolded” and “kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “[E]ven after it was clear to any reasonable observer that vice president Pence was in serious danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the president sent a further tweet attacking his own vice president”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “[P]redictably and foreseeably, under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as a further inspiration to lawlessness and violence”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “Later, even when the president did half-heartedly begin calling for peace, he didn't call right away for the riot to end” and “did not tell the mob to depart until even later” and “even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering the Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, it was Donald Trump who did “engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked” the assault on the bastion of our democracy;
Therefore be it resolved, that Donald John Trump, former president of the United States, for his disgraceful conduct against the United States, its Constitution and our democracy, is hereby censured in the strongest possible terms as one who is unfit ever again to hold the office of president of the United States or any other position of public trust.
In an essay last September on the occasion of Constitution Day, I highlighted the work of scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Professors of government and the authors of The Tyranny of the Minority, they wrote again about authoritarianism’s accomplices in a September 8 column in the New York Times.
Below, quoting myself, I conclude this essay as I concluded that one. McConnell also having recently announced that he will retire after his current term, this injunction does not directly apply to him. It is urgent that people of decency and sense move against the vast array of authoritarianism’s enablers who continue to imperil our country.
Levitsky and Ziblatt noted that “Republican leaders’ acquiescence to Mr. Trump’s authoritarianism is neither inevitable nor unavoidable. It is a choice.”
Citizens also can make a choice – to stand up against authoritarianism in all legal and peaceful ways available to them. As the authors concluded, writing with reference to the accomplices, “American voters must hold them to account.”