A Party of Insurrectionists
Donald Trump has been indicted for his role in attempting to overthrow the 2020 Election. But the Republican Party should also be held accountable
Well.
That’s that.
Former president Donald Trump has been indicted again, this time for his role in the attempted coup of January 6th, 2021. Trump will face charges of conspiring to defraud the United States of America, conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiring to deprive citizens of their right to vote. If you haven’t read the indictment - and boy howdy is worth it reading - you can feast your eyes here.
The indictment is typical Jack Smith. Damning and airtight. Trump has been caught dead-to-rights working to overturn the 2020 Election, which even Trump knew he had lost. As has been the case with his numerous other indictments, the case is self-explanatory. You can imagine the grand jury finishing with the last word in the last sentence and nodding immediately. After all, Trump’s crimes are, and have always been, obvious and self-evident.
What’s more, he’s never particularly hidden them. From the beginning of his career in the public eye, Trump has suffered from an inability to hold his cards close to his chest. Well, no, that’s not exactly right. He hasn’t really learned how to hold them at all. It’s more his style to go on national television in front of millions of people and admit his crimes than anything else.
The case against him was an easy make. In fact, it’s been made over and over again by a lot of us who watched this play out day by day without anything near the resources Smith or the Department of Justice had at their disposal. The biggest question heading into this mess is why it took the DOJ so long to put this together and why we’re facing a presidential election in which this demagogue might be facing charges of this magnitude while also carrying the mantle of a major political party.
Meanwhile, it doesn’t appear that much is going to happen beyond the charging of Trump. There are the half dozen co-conspirators - Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, Kenneth Chesebro, and a yet-to-be-identified sixth person - but they are firmly within Trump’s orbit and constitute an effective compartmentalization of the January 6th insurrection. Based on these charges, and everything we have seen from the January 6th Commission, the narrative we are presented with is that a bunch of MAGA bozos got together, attempted a haphazard coup, and nearly succeeded. It’s quick, it’s easy, and effectively neutralizes a larger criticism that begins to trouble the larger donor class that strategized, funded, and coordinated the plot.
But examining this aspect of the story can wait, even if the investigation and crackdown won’t come near it. Instead, what I’d like to discuss is that within the indictment, within the charges, there is a larger question that can be asked without going into the intentionally tangled and dark webs of the donor class.
That question is this: should the Republican Party exist?
I’m not being clever. I’m not being glib.
One of the two major parties has shown a willingness to overturn an election, to deprive the people of their votes and their civil rights. They operated as an effectively well-oiled machine to carry out that goal.
And so, we must discuss that troubling, but necessary point.
How could anybody now say the Republican Party should be trusted with power?