“[Tomorrow],
on February 28, 2017, the United States will witness what may be the single
greatest act of collective treachery by its elected government officials since
the Confederate States voted to secede from the Union in 1860 and 1861. And in
all likelihood, the U.S. media will completely ignore it.
“On
Tuesday the Republican-dominated House Judiciary Committee is expected to reject House Democrats’ Resolution for a formal inquiry into the potential ethical
and legal violations committed by the Trump campaign apparatus in its contacts,
communications and financial transactions with Russia during the run-up to
Trump’s election last November, and throughout the transition since then. It
will also reject calls to examine evidence of Trump’s solicitation and receipt
of foreign gifts intended to influence American policy, and the potential
violations of the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution.
“The
evidence pointing to Trump’s betrayal of American strategic interests has (thus
far) included illegal contacts between Trump emissaries and Putin officials
concerning the lifting of existing U.S. sanctions, evidence that the
Trump campaign was aware of and likely complicit in Russian efforts to sway the
election to Trump through Russian propaganda, and evidence suggesting that
Trump himself may be compromised and subject to Russian blackmail due to either
his financial dealings or his unusual sexual proclivities. These issues,
unearthed by our intelligence agencies, directly implicate the integrity of our
national government. It’s difficult to imagine any matter that could be more
compelling for investigation and resolution. This is, in essence, a determination
whether an elected President has been corrupted, compromised, or tainted by a
hostile foreign power.
“As
Jonathan Chait points out in New York Magazine, despite the enormous
implications for the nation, the political risk to House Republicans from
refusing to investigate Trump is practically nil. As Mark Sumner explains here, the Republicans have carefully assigned the
House’s decision on the resolution to their own Judiciary Committee, and
carefully timed their pre-ordained rejection of the Resolution to minimize or
hide it from the public. Few Republicans are members of the Committee
itself, and those who make it up are from ‘safe seats,’ carefully selected by
the House leadership.
“The
main ‘news event’ on Tuesday will be Trump’s first address to the entire
Congress. The media will parse every word of that speech, and pundits’ tongues
will be chattering about that and that alone, filling up every second of
available airtime. Little or no focus will be made on the single vote of a
House Committee that the vast majority of the public could not identify in a
lineup, and it will disappear unnoticed, lost in the wake of something
outrageous Trump will absolutely make sure to spew in his speech to the
Congress that afternoon:
“It
will be a minor story that probably receives scant or nonexistent coverage from
television news, and then it will be quickly over. To be sure, coverage of
Trump’s scandals will surely continue. But coverage of the House role in
permitting Trump’s behavior will be extremely minimal.
“But
the treachery and betrayal will be complete. The moral bankruptcy of the
Republican Party will have reached its apotheosis. A Republican Congress,
through their own hand-picked ‘Committee,’ will deliberately turn a blind eye
towards patent evidence disclosed by our Intelligence Services of collaboration
between Trump’s highest campaign officials, Trump himself, and the Russian
government, its emissaries, and its President-dictator, Vladimir Putin.
Putting their own interests before the integrity of the country itself, they
will choose to ignore the fact that an unfriendly foreign state, is directly
interfering with our system of government.
“Try
to imagine the reaction of Republicans if the proverbial shoe were on the other
foot--if Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or some similar Democrat had been
tainted with strong evidence of collaborating with the Russians to win the
election. And if, following that, they refused to divulge their financial ties
or their campaign’s contacts with the Russian state. Imagine if their
denials turned out time and time again to be outright lies. And then just try
to imagine the Democrats in Congress deliberately refusing to investigate such
accusations.
“The
Republicans would call it Treason.
And they’d be right. Chait
explains that what we are witnessing in the House’s refusal to act is a latent
failure of our entire Democratic system:
“One
of the flaws in the design of the federal government is that, while the
founders envisioned competing branches of government, unified party control of
government can turn those branches into partners who do not check each other’s
abuses. A second flaw is that Congress has a diffuse and
often-confusing decision-making process that can make public accountability
extremely difficult.
Both problems come together in a new story that ought to be
huge news but will instead be relegated to legislative arcana.
“In
this case the House simply refused to investigate the allegations of Trump’s
perfidy. Coldly refused, without fanfare or explanation, thumbing their nose,
in effect, at not only the Democrats and the American people. When
Democrats in the House forced their hand, they responded not in accordance with
their Constitutional oaths, but in accordance with their wealthy contributors
who stand to benefit immensely from the tax cuts they intend to implement, and
which Trump, Russian stooge or not, will eagerly rubber-stamp.
“But
first they had to insure they would be insulated from their constituents’ wrath
at this blatant act of betrayal. And, according to Chait, therein lies the
problem:
“The
average House Republican votes for the party leadership, which then allocates
decisions like this to individual committees, which can be stacked with partisan
loyalists from safe districts...
“If
you are a voter in the district of one of the House Republicans who might be
vulnerable in a potential Democratic wave election, who do you blame? Well, in January, your
representative voted for the leadership that decided to shunt the resolution of
inquiry to the Judiciary Committee, that will vote … but you can already see the
problem. Your district’s representative had no direct
involvement in the decision. There won’t be any dramatic coverage of his floor
vote, as would be the case for a major law. At best, an effective pressure campaign at
home might persuade your representative to endorse an investigation, but that
endorsement would be toothless anyway, since Paul Ryan is calling the shots.
“The
real flaw in our system is that the Founders mistakenly envisioned a House of
Representatives who actually would put their country’s interests first in such
a circumstance. They assumed a Congress made of individuals with some sense
of integrity and moral character. The current radical Republican spawn of
the Tea Party, in firm control of the House of Representatives, have neither.
And they’ve made the calculation that most of their constituents won’t care:
“It
requires a lot of generally partisan Republicans to vote against more familiar
and long-standing beliefs about guns, abortion, race, and so on to punish their
elected representatives for a procedural matter. And that is why Trump has
decided he can continue to demolish norms and laws, and why his fellow Republicans
have decided they can safely go along.
“So
on Tuesday, the Republican Congress won’t call out Trump for violating the
Constitution, even for selling the country out to a hostile foreign power.
Treachery, to them, will just be another day at the office. We should never let
them forget what they’ve done.”
[The
Republican (majority) members of the Judiciary Committee are listed
here. To call your Member of Congress: US Capitol Switchboard (202)
224-3121. To locate your Member on-line: U.S. House of Representatives: www.house.gov].
from
the Daily Kos, Dartagnan.
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