February 9, 2022
A new low

 

From time to time I’ve wondered how low the Republican Party can go.  There seems to be no bottom, but it certainly took a deep dive last week. 
 

The Republican National Committee (RNC) already had declared its continuing fealty to Trump by boycotting debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Now it has adopted a resolution censuring Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger for their membership on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
 

The document is entitled “Resolution to Formally Censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and to No Longer Support Them as Members of The Republican Party.”  Included in its recitals is this, which reveals the Party’s detachment from reality: “The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism . . . .”  Another recital, referring to the House Republican Conference, declares the Party’s substitution of obstruction for policy: “The Conference must design the strategy to stop the radical Biden agenda . . . .”
 

Why must they be censured?  “The Conference must not be sabotaged by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger[,] who have demonstrated, with actions and words, that they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022 . . . .”  (Note the slur-by-ignorance reference to the “Democrat” Party).  To the RNC, winning a majority is crucial because it is a Republican “victory in November on which the future of our constitutional republic depends at this critical moment in history . . . .”  Trump Republicans: saviors of the nation.
 

What is wrong with the House January 6 Committee?  According to the Resolution, its “disregard for minority rights, traditional checks and balances, due process, and adherence to other precedent and rules of the U.S. House,” none of which are specified.  There’s more: the Committee’s actions “seem intent on advancing a political agenda to buoy the Democrat bleak prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.”  Of course, attacking the Committee isn’t playing politics.
 

However, the real sin is that “Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse . . . .”  Thugs who attacked police officers, scaled the walls of the Capitol, broke windows, rampaged through the halls and called for blood were “engaged in legitimate political discourse.”  This is the level to which a proud American political party has sunk. 
 

Based upon that incredible recital, the RNC pompously

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee hereby formally censures Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and shall immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic, and is inconsistent with the position of the Conference.

 

That a principled, patriotic stand by two Representatives is “destructive to . . . the Republican Party” rather gives the game away.   
 

The RNC, facing outrage, attempted to walk back its bland description of the rioters, “citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” by unconvincingly claiming that it referred only to those who were at thr Capitol peacefully, though nothing in the Resolution suggests that, and the House Committee is not “persecuting” peaceful demonstrators.
 

The Resolution recites that “The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values;” I think we can guess which, in the view of the RNC, comes first.

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<br>1.  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/04/us/rnc-resolution-censure-cheney-kinziger.html