Once again, Republicans have betrayed our country. Only seven Republicans voted guilty in the impeachment trial of the former president. The other 43 Republican Senators betrayed their oath of office to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Forty-nine abdicated their sworn oath a year ago when the former president tried to bribe a foreign president to interfere in the elections of the United States. They supported a president who for four years acted as if there was no limit on his authority. Then, they supported him when he tried to overturn an election by inciting a violent insurrection against the United States Congress. 

Worst of all, the defense for the former president put up no defense. The defense presented red herrings, slurs, and outright lies in their lack of understanding of the procedures of a Senate impeachment trial. They did not care to ask their client simple questions that could have provided evidence, which they did not because there was no evidence that the former president was not guilty. It should have been apparent to all Senators that the former president was so indefensible that all he could get to defend him were a group of ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyers who did not have the slightest understanding of impeachment proceedings or the U.S. Constitution. Their malpractice should be a disgrace to any lawyer in America.

Once again, we have been betrayed by the majority of Republicans in our federal government. How long will they be allowed to continue to betray us?

Republicans have a chance to take back their Party, but I doubt they will do that. The Republican Party leaders could take back the Party and get back to the traditional values of the Republican Party (even though I see much of their beliefs about social welfare and the economy as misguided). Republicans have been mostly reprehensible to me in the last 20 years, but at one time, they did believe in a platform and a set of standards. The fringe elements of the GOP date back much farther. In the 1950s, Republicans led by Senator Joseph McCarthy incited the Red Scare claiming there were communists everywhere and going on a witch hunt throughout the United States. We know now that Sen. McCarthy’s infamous “list,” which supposedly named communists who had infiltrated the heart of the United States government, was completely fabricated. On February 9, 1950, McCarthy told a crowd of 275 at the Ohio County Republican Women’s Club that the U.S. State Department was “thoroughly infested with communists” and brandished papers he claimed were a list of 57 such subversives. No such list ever existed. The Red Scare eventually ended when Republican Senators stood up to McCarthy. The Senate censured him but not before he had ruined thousands of lives with his accusations of communism.

McCarthy is just the most famous of the examples of Republican extremism gone too far. Another example happened on July 14, 1964, supporters of Barry Goldwater, who was about to accept the Republican nomination for president, unleashed a torrent of boos against New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as he spoke at the Party’s national convention in San Francisco. Some might remember this event, but what is usually forgotten is why Rockefeller, who had lost the nomination to Goldwater, was standing behind the lectern in the first place. He was there to speak in support of an amendment to the party platform that would condemn political extremism. The resolution repudiated “the efforts of irresponsible extremist organizations,” including the Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the John Birch Society (JBS), a rapidly growing far-right grassroots group obsessed with the alleged communist infiltration of America.

The resolution failed, which testifies to the GOP’s long-standing reluctance to separate themselves from the extremists who congregate at its fringes. But the fact that such a resolution was debated at all—in such a visible venue, with such high-profile advocates—also says something about Republicans today. In the past, the GOP had a stronger core of resistance to extremism than it’s had in the era of the former president, QAnon, the Proud Boys, and the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene. The history of JBS shows us that this radical element has been a part of the Republican Party since the middle of the last century. In case you aren’t familiar with the John Birch Society, it is a radical right and far-right American political advocacy group supporting anti-communism and limited government. Canadian author Jeet Heer argued in The New Republic that while its influence peaked in the 1970s, “Bircherism” and its legacy of conspiracy theories have become the dominant strain in the conservative movement. Politico has asserted that the JBS began making a resurgence in the mid-2010s, and JBS itself has argued that it shaped the modern conservative movement, especially the former president’s administration.

The question of how Republicans deal with the extremists in their ranks is now more urgent than perhaps at any other point since the Birch Society’s heyday in the 1960s. So far, little has been done to uproot these fringe elements. Representative Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders have shown no interest in acting against House members who promoted or spoke at the rally ahead of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. And while GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans have criticized Greene—a relatively easy target—almost all have signaled that they will not vote in the impeachment trial to impose any consequences on the former president for his role in inciting the attack. McConnell sees himself in a desperate position to preserve the Republican Party and has warned Republican colleagues in private conference meetings the GOP faces a new “John Birch Society” problem that the Party must aggressively purge.

Those who care about the traditional values of the Republican Party could jointly stand together and denounce the previous president, his supporters in the Senate and the House, and the fringe extremists who have devoted themselves to perpetuating the previous president’s lies at any cost. If they voted to convict in the impeachment, denounce extremism, then they could have a chance to take back the Party. If they do not stand up for what is the right thing to do and convict the previous president, the fringe extremists that have plagued the Party since the middle of the last century will overtake the Party and drive it further to the right. The problem I see is that McConnell and others in the Republican Party have allowed the extremists to grow like a cancerous tumor. McConnell said himself that the “Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country.” The problem is that his analogy is too apt, and I think the cancerous tumor has been left untreated for so long until it is terminal. That was evident in Greene’s response. On Twitter, Greene wrote, “The real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully. This is why we are losing our country.”

The Republicans could take a stand during this impeachment trial. They could turn against the extremists in their Party. I realize that they will not eject any Congress members for their extremism, but they could ostracize the extremists for their actions. They could censure them, though I think that too is unlikely. What they can do is to give them so little influence in Congress that opponents can use it against them in their next election. Maybe once they do this and take back the Republican Party along more traditional lines without the extremism, they can finally come into the twenty-first century and possibly become decent human beings. Either way, I’d rather have the traditional business Republicans than the fringe elements who seem to control the Party today.

Are Republicans stupid, or have they used deception and lies for so long, they can no longer see reality? Senator Kevin Cramer was on MSNBC yesterday morning discussing the impeachment trial. He made numerous blatantly false claims, and when the anchors tried to correct him, he stuck to his guns, claiming they were incorrect. One of his lies (or just stupidity) was that Nancy Pelosi withheld the articles of impeachment until after the former president left office. As Stephanie Ruel pointed out, Pelosi was ready to send over the articles of impeachment on January 14 but was told by the Senate Parliamentarian that since the Senate had been dismissed, she could not send over the articles until the Senate reconvened. McConnell purposely delayed the trial of the former president so that he could make the argument that a former president cannot be tried after he left office. Cramer claimed that it would have taken unanimous consent to reconvene the Senate when anyone who was paying attention knows that the Senate could have bypassed this with the consent of the Senate Majority Leader (McConnell, at the time) and Senate Minority Leader (Schumer, at the time). Though Schumer agreed to reconvene the Senate, McConnell refused. Contrary to Cramer’s claim and that of the former president’s defense team, Pelosi was not responsible for the trial taking place after the former president left office. McConnell is entirely and wholly responsible for this and purposely held up the impeachment trial.

There is no doubt that the former president’s defense lawyers presented an unorganized and deceptive argument filled with lies, subterfuge, and fringe legal theories. Just about the only thing that they said truthfully was that Joe Biden won the election, fair and square and that the House Managers presented an excellent case for the constitutionality of an impeachment trial of a former president. The former president’s defense started on a strange note, with one of his lawyers, Bruce Castor, giving a meandering defense of the former president. He rarely referenced the former president or his behavior on January 6. At times, he appeared to be arguing for the former president’s free speech rights and against a partisan cycle of impeachments. The other defense lawyer, David Schoen, delivered a more forceful speech, accusing Democrats of trying to “disenfranchise” the former president’s supporters. It was a strange defense because the former president had spent the previous 77 days trying to disenfranchise millions of voters in states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Schoen also described the trial as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of a “private citizen.” Schoen argued that the House had violated the former president’s due process rights by pursuing impeachment so quickly and that if the Senate went ahead with the trial, it would set a precedent under which the House could impeach any public official at any time after leaving office if control of Congress changed hands. In his argument, he suggested lawmakers had impeached the former president too soon and too late. The defense team’s arguments were often contradictory of one another, and even of their own arguments at times. Castor even argued for the criminal prosecution of the former president by the Justice Department, and Cramer repeated this argument on MSNBC. Of course, if the Justice Department did file charges against the former president for inciting an insurrection, the Republicans would go crazy calling it a Democratic witch hunt, even after they had argued for that exact thing to happen.

Numerous Republican Senators derided the defense presented by the former president’s lawyers. Ted Cruz said, “I don’t think the lawyers did the most effective job.” Cruz added that the lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin, was “impressive.” Sen. John Cornyn, who is among Trump’s defenders on Capitol Hill, said that he has seen “a lot of lawyers and a lot of arguments” and that Castor’s “was not one of the finest I’ve seen.” Sen. Lindsay Graham said, “Well, I think I — I thought I — I really didn’t know — I thought I knew where he was going. And I really didn’t know where he was going.” Graham added that “nobody’s mind was changed one way or the other.” However, the House Managers changed one Republican Senator’s mind. Sen. Bill Cassidy was the only Republican Senator to switch his vote to support moving forward with the impeachment trial. Cassidy said after the first day of arguments, “The issue at hand, is it constitutional to impeach a president who’s left office? And the House managers made a compelling, cogent case, and the president’s team did not.” He said that the former president’s defense lawyers gave meandering opening statements that were incoherent and ineffective.

In yesterday’s presentation by the House Managers, a case was methodically made using the former president’s own words and tweets. I had several things I had to do yesterday afternoon, so I did not get to watch the House Managers’ complete presentation, but what I saw was so overwhelmingly convincing that I cannot understand how anyone can vote for acquittal. However, the sad thing is that most of the Republican Senators, if not all, recognize that what happened on January 6 was horrible, indefensible, and the fault of months of rhetoric by the former president culminating in his call for his supporters to march to the Capitol and present a show of strength. Yet, I do not expect the former president to be convicted. On Twitter, Senator Lindsey Graham called the yesterday’s presentation “offensive and absurd.” The only thing offensive about the presentation was the former president’s actions. There was nothing absurd about the evidence presented. It was terrifying. As Dave R commented yesterday, “They won’t convict because that makes them complicit. They would rather let the American voters fire their asses than grow a spine.” Just like the first impeachment trial, the vast majority of Republicans are not only making a mockery of the judicial/legislative process of impeachment, but they are making a mockery of the United States. Their inaction makes them just as culpable as the former president.