Never_Forget_the_Names_of_These_Republicans_Attempting_a_Coup

Never Forget the Names of These Republicans Attempting a Coup
This time they’ll fail. But their disloyalty to America is clear.

Thomas L. Friedmann
Jan. 5, 2021
Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The New Testament asks us in Mark 8:36: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the
whole world, but lose his soul?”
Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson and all their fellow G.O.P. coup plotters
clearly have forgotten that verse — if they ever knew it — for they are ready to sacrifice their
souls, the soul of their party and the soul of America — our tradition of free and fair elections
as the means for peacefully transferring power — so that Donald Trump can remain
president and one of these sleazebags can eventually replace him.
The governing “philosophy” of these unprincipled Trump-cult Republicans is unmistakably

clear: “Democracy is fine for us as long as it is a mechanism for us to be in control. If we
can’t hold power, then to hell with rules and to hell with the system. Power doesn’t flow from
the will of the people — it flows from our will and our leader’s will.”
From left, Senators Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.
From left: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP; Samuel Corum/Getty Images; pool photo by Susan
Walsh
For America to be healthy again, decent Republicans — in office and in business — need to
break away from this unprincipled Trump-cult G.O.P. and start their own principled
conservative party. It is urgent.
Even if only a small group of principled, center-right lawmakers — and the business leaders
who fund them — broke away and formed their own conservative coalition, they would
become hugely influential in today’s closely divided Senate. They could be a critical swing
faction helping to decide which Biden legislation passes, is moderated or fails.
Meanwhile, the Trump-rump G.O.P. cult would become what it needs to become for America
to grow together again — a discredited, powerless minority of crackpots waiting around for
Trump’s latest tweet to tell them what to do, say and believe.
I know that fracturing an established party is not easy (or likely). But the principled
Republicans, those who have courageously and dutifully defended Joe Biden’s electoral
victory, have to ask themselves: “In a few days, when all of this is over, are we going to just
go back to business as usual with people who are, in effect, attempting the first legislative
coup d’état in American history?”
Because when this episode is over, Trump will be doing or saying something else
outrageous to undermine Biden and to make collaboration impossible, and the Trump lap
dogs, like Cruz, Hawley, Johnson and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, will be
demanding the party go along to serve their political interests, putting the principled
Republicans in a daily bind. Every week there will be a new loyalty test.
There is simply no equivalence now between our two major parties. In the primaries, an
overwhelming majority of Democrats, led by moderate African-Americans, chose to go with
the center-left Biden, not the far-left defund-the-police-democratic-socialist wing.
Across the aisle, Trump’s G.O.P. became such a cult that it decided at its convention that it
would offer no party platform. Its platform would be whatever its Dear Leader wanted on any
given day. When any party stops thinking — and stops drawing any redlines around a leader
as unethical as Trump — he’ll keep taking it deeper and deeper into the abyss, right up to
the gates of Hell.
Where it’s now arrived.
We saw that this weekend with Trump’s Mafia-like effort to squeeze Georgia’s secretary of
state to just “find” him 11,780 votes and declare him the state’s winner by one vote over
Biden.
And we will see it in an even uglier version in Wednesday’s session in Congress. The Trump
cultists will try to transform a ceremony designed exclusively to count the Electoral College
votes submitted by each state — Biden 306 and Trump 232 — into an attempt to get
Congress to nullify the electoral votes of swing states that Trump lost.
If I were the editor of this newspaper, I’d print all of their pictures on a full page, under the
headline: “Never Forget These Faces: These Lawmakers Had a Choice Between Loyalty to
Our Constitution and to Trump, and They Chose Trump.”
If you have any doubts that these people are engaged in seditious behavior, their more
principled Republican colleagues do not. Speaking of Hawley’s plan to challenge the vote
count, Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska, said: “I am going to support my
oath to the Constitution. That’s the loyalty test here.” Added Senator Ben Sasse of
Nebraska, “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.” Said
Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, “I cannot support allowing Congress to thwart the will of the
voters.”
So, the coup-plotter caucus will fail. But ask yourself this: What if Trump’s allies controlled
the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court and got their way — actually used some
11th-hour legislative maneuver and nullified Biden’s victory?
I know exactly what would have happened. Many of the 81,283,485 Americans who voted
for Biden would have taken to the streets — I would have been one of them — and probably
stormed the White House, the Capitol and the Supreme Court. Trump would have called out
the military; the National Guard, directed by governors, would have split over this, and we
would be plunged into civil war.
That is the sort of fire these people are playing with. Of course, they know it — which makes
the efforts of Hawley, Cruz, Johnson and their ilk even more despicable. They have so little
self-respect that they’re ready to lick the shine off of Donald Trump’s boots down to his last
second in office, in hopes of inheriting his followers — should he not run again in 2024. And
they are counting on a majority of their more principled colleagues voting to recognize
Biden’s election — to make sure their effort fails.
That way, they’ll get the best of all worlds — credit with Trump voters for pursuing his Big Lie
— his fraudulent allegation that the elections were a fraud — without plunging us into civil
war. But the long-term price will still be profound — diminishing the confidence of many
Americans in the integrity of our free and fair elections as the basis for peacefully
transferring power.
Can you imagine anything more cynical?
How do decent Americans fight back, besides urging principled Republicans to form their
own party? Make sure we exact a tangible price from every lawmaker who votes with Trump
and against the Constitution.
Shareholders of every major U.S. corporation should make sure that these companies’
political action committees are barred from making campaign contributions to anyone who
participates in Wednesday’s coup attempt.
At the same time, “we the people” need to fight the Trump cult’s Big Lie with the Big Truth. I
hope every news organization, and every citizen, refers to Hawley, Cruz, Johnson and their
friends now and forever more as “coup plotters.”
Make all those who have propagated this Big Lie about election fraud to justify voting with
Trump and against our Constitution carry the title — “coup plotter” — forever. If you see them
on the street, in a restaurant on your college campus, politely ask them: “You were one of
the coup plotters, weren’t you? Shame on you.”
Adopt Trump’s method: Repeat this Big Truth over and over and over until these people can
never get rid of it.
It won’t be sufficient to fix what ails us — we still need a new conservative party for that —
but it sure is necessary to give others pause about trying this again.

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Never Forget the Names of These Republicans Attempting a Coup

This time they’ll fail. But their disloyalty to America is clear.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The governing “philosophy” of these unprincipled Trump-cult Republicans is unmistakably

Where it’s now arrived.

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