National overview
Rand Paul misread the politics of Trump’s Senate hearing
Rand Paul wants you to know this while he’s not agreeing with the [Capitol] January 6, he does not believe that President Trump – whose two-month powerful crusade to convince his supporters that the election was stolen – should be disqualified as the immediate cause of the “fight” in the future . Language is uncomfortable these days, but ‘I did not agree with the struggle’ is wandering in the opposite direction: it is too tame a reaction to the sick January 6 exhibition. It was no ordinary ‘battle’. It was an attempt to forcibly interrupt the counting of election votes, and thus the peaceful transfer of power to the next duly elected government. It stunned America and embarrassed us before the world. It made us look like a banana republic. This resulted in several deaths and could have led to a physical attack on or even the assassination of the Vice President as he operated the most important business of his term. Trump’s actions may not have met the legal definition of incitement, but he threw a match over the ignition he carefully placed and was thoroughly soaked with petroleum. As Dan McLaughlin wrote, Trump must experience the consequences “spectacularly enough to deter any recurrence as long as our national memory exists.” But if Senator Paul has his way, Trump will apparently suffer no consequences and will re-enter private life as the biggest favorite to be the next Republican presidential candidate. This is madness. Abraham Lincoln’s party was good without Trump for 150 years and it will survive him for a long time. Since the parties are largely ruled from the ground up, it is not feasible to oust Trump from a GOP he took over in 2015 and has since shamed, but it is possible for 17 Republican senators to condemn him and to disqualify for any future high office in the United States. This is the right thing to do, and it is also the wise thing to do for the sake of the party as well as the country. The GOP can not afford to spend the next four years declaring Trump’s indefensible actions. It needs to move on, and there is only one way to do it. Paul foresees a colossal split in the party if Trump is convicted and his future term in office is banned, warning that one-third of the party will walk away from the IDP in that scenario. He is wrong: one of the curses (but sometimes also one of the blessings) of our culture is our infamous short collective memory. Should Trump be disqualified this winter, the discussion will quickly shift to other topics. Who should be the bearer of the new party? Don Jr.? I doubt it very much. It is unclear that even Trump sr. Will be enthusiastic about it, after repeatedly making fun of his younger namesake as ‘many’ not the sharpest knife in the drawer. ‘For five years we’ve seen different other Republican politicians try to pursue Trump’s combination of attitude and populism, and it never works. Senator Josh Hawley turned his reputation upside down for two years in an effort to extract equity from the Trump bench, and it got him nowhere. A Politico / Morning Consult poll taken in November put him at 1 percent in the polls, and that was before his disgraceful action on January 6th. Although some of Trump’s ideas about trade and immigration in some parts of the party may still swing. , Is Trumpism as a whole too closely linked to one man to be handed over to a new leader. It will die with Trump’s political career, and the party will move on. A disqualified Trump will, of course, rain a hell of a fire on the senators who disqualified him, as well as on any other alleged backstabbers. But in four years, when ten Republican senators are re-elected, Trump’s anger will be background noise at worst. Six years from now, if Ben Sasse, Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins and 17 of their Republican colleagues face the voters, it will not be at all. Trump himself has a short attention span and a fear of being boring; even he will not be able to sustain the insults for four years, and even less six, on whatever cable news chair he chooses to pamper the nation. It is true that Trump is the only thing that fascinates Trump throughout. But America does not love a hurt loser, and its act of sacrifice will lapse by the next time voters go to the polls. Gradually, even many of his most ardent supporters will realize that the man is an embarrassment. Among those who persist in the fantasy that Trump has been robbed and that lawmakers who voted against him are sworn enemies, how will it play out at the ballot box? It will not, because voting will remain a binary choice. Trump, who is disqualified, will not be able to act as a third-party candidate and divide the party. The primary motivating force for voters will continue, as it has done for years, visceral aversion to one party’s style and policies. Joe Biden has indicated in many ways that, by far the fact that he is a unifying president, he would consider it a core duty to focus on punishing and antagonizing Trump supporters through appointments and policies specifically designed is to irritate them. Biden has seen Trump play the role of Troll-in-Chief for the past four years and decides he wants to act. Kamala Harris, should he become president, is even more despised by both conventional Republicans and Trumpists. So never fear, Senator Paul: Republicans will quickly close post-Trump ranks. The most important thing the American right stands for is the hatred of what the Democrats are doing, and the Democrats are preparing to start a presidency full of policies that are easy to hate.