Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
I had a column written about President Donald Trump’s second impeachable phone call, this time to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger.
Then Jan. 6 happened.
That’s when organized democracy prevailed after a delusional mob, presumptuously assuming they represented a majority, which they did not, was thwarted in an attempt to force their will on Congress.
Congress then acted to officially validate the will of both the voters and the electors by certifying the election victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
It could have been a disaster for democracy, but law enforcement officers acting with patient resolve eventually brought the attempted coup to a soft landing, calmly leading away in handcuffs the perpetrators they could round up as evening descended.
I disagree with journalists who labeled the day as one of the most significant in our history (largely because they were there to cover it). Thanks to law enforcement, the day will be a footnote, like the mob that crashed the gate in 1829 for President Andrew Jackson’s inauguration.
I am hoping the day’s real significance is in marking the beginning of the end of Trump’s influence on the Republican Party and the repossession of the GOP by the reasonable right-of-center from Mitt Romney to Lindsey Graham.
What I found most disturbing in the mob that crashed the Capitol was the absence of banners that showed loyalty to a cause.
The banners touted only an individual, the cult leader Trump.
Trump is where about half of the blame for Jan. 6 rests. He is the delusional liar who incited their actions.
He has forgotten that he won the presidency with a minority of the popular vote in 2016, persisting in the illusion that he is universally loved.
He will not acknowledge some reprehensible actions, a childish compulsion to punish all whose loyalty is not absolute, and his ignorance and contempt for the conventions that keep our country a democracy.
The other half of the blame goes to Trump’s enablers.
If elected officials, they were paralyzed by the loyalty of Trump’s base to his Rambo-like belligerence toward everything they blamed for their own troubles.
If they were self-appointed panderers like Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson, their wealth expanded with every outrage they could concoct out of thin air or wispy fragments of fact.
If they were anonymous cowards like “Q” of QAnon, they gloated as their flames of falsehood blew up into firestorm conspiracies that were eagerly repeated and exponentially expanded by gullible social media users driven by baseless fears.
The Republican party can and must do better than Trump.
As a Democrat, I assert unequivocally that we need a viable Republican party. Both parties have a habit of loading an agenda onto their end of the pendulum until its weight forces the pendulum the other way.
The pendulum now comes to rest in front of the Democrats, but I expect the Republicans to gird for hard battle, this time by democracy’s messy rules – and without Trump.
Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: