REPUBLICANS STILL AREN’T READY TO ACCEPT DEMOCRACY

BY JOEL MCNALLY

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised Republicans when he was elected, “We’re gonna win so much you’re gonna get tired of winning.” Like so many of the lies Trump told his gullible supporters, just the opposite turned out to be true.

Trump’s disastrous, divisive presidency quickly alienated so many American voters it led to major Republican losses in the next three national elections. In November’s midterms, overwhelmingly favoring the minority party, Republicans won a razor-thin House majority incapable of passing much of any legislation.

But Republicans aren’t tired of losing yet. They re-elected Ronna McDaniel, Trump’s handpicked chair of the Republican National Committee who presided over the last six years of election defeats. They’re ready to go for eight in a row in 2024.

It tells you everything you need to know about McDaniel that she used to proudly call herself Ronna Romney McDaniel. She agreed to drop her family name when Trump recruited her for the job because he hated her uncle Mitt. That was even before the Utah senator, the party’s 2012 nominee for president, voted to convict Trump for the high crimes that led to both of his impeachments.

Fringes Of Society

Political hatred is the only ideology of the armed White supremacists and other violent extremists Trump attracted from the fringes of society to vote Republican in 2016. Political hatred often leads to political violence in America. And that’s exactly how Trump’s supporters opened and closed his angry, hateful presidency.

Terrorist Klansmen and neo-Nazis were among those Trump called “very fine people” who traveled to Charlottesville, Va., in the summer of 2017. They celebrated his election with a violent “Unite the Right” street battle opposing the city’s removal of Confederate monuments that killed a young woman and injured dozens of others.

Trump summoned those same violent groups to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, in his attempt to overthrow democracy and remain as president after his defeat. That time he praised them as “very special” for rampaging through the Capitol threatening to murder members of Congress and his own vice president. Trump told them he loved them and to “Remember this day forever!”

POLITICAL HATRED IS THE ONLY IDEOLOGY OF THE ARMED WHITE SUPREMACISTS AND OTHER VIOLENT EXTREMISTS TRUMP ATTRACTED FROM THE FRINGES OF SOCIETY TO VOTE REPUBLICAN IN 2016.

That’s another reason McDaniel should not lead any legitimate political party in America. She wrote the resolution the RNC overwhelmingly passed a year ago condemning Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the bipartisan House Committee investigating the deadlyinsurrection. McDaniel called it “Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Gop Dishonors Police

That’s an obscene description of the horrors America witnessed that day that murdered one police officer, later led to four more police deaths by suicide from depression and PTSD and left 140 others with brain damage and other permanent injuries from being brutally beaten with flagpoles, baseball bats and other clubs.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a moving ceremony at the University of Virginia honoring the police officers who testified publicly about the savagery they faced that day. It’s difficult to forget images of police slipping in the blood of colleagues while engaging in hand-tohand combat with other Americans to protect democracy.

Every decent American should be forever grateful for the televised public hearings by the bipartisan House committee presenting graphic details of what was happening within all the chaos and behind the scenes of the worst domestic terrorist attack on our country in history.

What the extreme rightwing Republicans who now control the House don’t understand is nobody cares about partisan political congressional investigations in which politicians in one party fraudulently accuse politicians in the other party of committing imaginary crimes.

Presidential Crimes

The hearings of the bipartisan House January 6 Committee like those of the bipartisan Senate Watergate Committee 50 years ago riveted the nation’s attention because both involved actual crimes by the president of the United States.

MITCH MCCONNELL AND KEVIN MCCARTHY BOTH HELD TRUMP RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VIOLENT INSURRECTION IMMEDIATELY AFTER IT HAPPENED. BUT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS TRIED TO PRETEND EVER SINCE THAT IT NEVER HAPPENED.

Richard Nixon’s crimes were nonviolent. A burglary ring run out of the Oval Office broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee during the 1972 presidential election. That seems like small change compared to Trump sending an armed mob of thousands of angry supporters to shut down a joint session of Congress to stop it from certifying President Biden’s election.

The January 6 Committee gathered detailed evidence of Trump’s direct involvement in organizing the violent attack on the Capitol and pressuring Mike Pence to throw out legitimate electoral votes for Biden and accept fake electoral votes for Trump submitted by Republicans in Wisconsin and other states. It’s now up to the Justice Department to prosecute.

Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy both held Trump responsible for the violent insurrection immediately after it happened. But the Republican Party has tried to pretend ever since that it never happened.

We all know it did. We couldn’t forget if we tried. Republicans don’t deserve to win another election until they’re ready to accept the votes of the American people.

Joel McNally was a critic and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal for 27 years. He has written the weekly Taking Liberties column for the Shepherd Express since 1996.

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. that sweltering afternoon of August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. told the nation of his dream, and how long his people had been waiting. Seared into that speech was “the fierce urgency of now.”

“Now” was 59 years ago. Much progress has been made on voting, housing, and employment, but not in many high-paying occupations. Among the remaining barriers to opportunity that have been getting far too little attention: gaps in math education and attainment across the social and economic spectrum.

Those deprived of solid math preparation are denied entry into many highly paid occupations. The lack of diversity in high-paid and rewarding professions, including the obvious ones—engineering, science, IT, medicine, business analysis and finance, economics—and, in this high-tech age, even history, political science, journalism, and the arts, has lasted generations, reinforcing the income and wealth gap across race, ethnic and gender lines.

Investment Through Learning

Unlike subsidies for rent, utilities, food and other important assistance, a working knowledge of math cannot simply be transferred. Instead that knowledge must be learned through an organized time commitment, involving both instruction and practice. For most of the math deprived, circumstances prevent them from