Presidents Day is upon us in the U.S., and what a way to celebrate it—by the cowardly betrayal by Senate Republicans (with a few notable exceptions) to hold their seditious and insurrectionist president accountable for actions that took lives and endangered the democratic process. In the face of the most appalling desecrations of truth and decency by their party leader, forty-three Senate Republicans, apparently ruled by fear, abandoned their duty to defend the Constitution. They should all be turned out of office, every single one of them.
First to go should be Mitch McConnell, who—immediately after voting to acquit Trump—declared, “There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” and called his actions “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.” He further acknowledged that months of Trump’s false claims about the elections set the stage for the event.
But where was this good Senator for all those months when Trump was whining and spinning lies to persuade a shocking fraction of the population that he’d been wronged? What was Mitch McConnell doing? He could have taken steps to at least stem the anti-democratic tide in the Senate. He did not. He could have acknowledged the outcome of the election when it became clear. He did not. He abandoned his responsibility to the republic, and instead, hid in fear of disfavor from the Trump base.
It is often said that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.” That assertion has rarely been demonstrated as clearly as by the failure of currently sitting Republican Representatives and Senators to hold their own party’s leader accountable for sedition, insurrection, and wholesale dishonesty.
I know you already know all this. I just felt a need to put exactly where I stand on the record. For Presidents Day. May the coming year prove a good civics lesson for all of us.
