The
House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack
on the U.S. Capitol filed a motion asking a judge to put an end to the attempts
of Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows to stonewall the committee. Meadows has
tried to avoid talking to the committee or providing it with documents, using several
different arguments that essentially try to establish that the U.S. president
cannot be held accountable by Congress. The committee’s motion carefully
explains why those arguments are wrong.
To
support their belief that the Congress has the right and responsibility to
investigate the circumstances of the January 6 insurrection—a
correct understanding of our governmental system, in my view—the committee gave
the judge almost 250 pages of evidence.
Included
was some of the material I’ve been waiting for: a list of members of Congress
who participated in planning to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
We
have heard a lot about independent lawyers and members of the executive branch
who were willing to try to keep Trump in office. We have also heard about people
at the state level. But while there has been plenty of speculation about what
members of Congress were involved, we had little to go on.
We
knew that both former energy secretary Rick Perry of Texas and Representative
Jim Jordan (R-OH) had texted with Meadows about possible avenues for
overturning the election. We knew that Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene
(R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) had recorded videos before the insurrection
that suggested they supported it. We had an odd statement from Senator Chuck
Grassley (R-IA) on January 5 saying that
he, not then–Vice President Mike Pence, would count the certified electoral
ballots the next day. We had Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) allegedly saying
to Jordan on January 6, “Get away from
me. You f**ing did this.”
But
the January 6th committee
has just given us a bigger—although not the whole, yet—picture.
In last night’s filed motion
was part of the testimony to the committee from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former
special assistant to the president and the chief of staff. When asked which
members of Congress were involved in calls about overturning the
election—including calls saying such efforts were illegal—Hutchinson named
Representatives Greene, Jordan, Boebert, Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX),
Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and
Debbie Lesko (R-AZ).
The
heart of this group was the “Freedom Caucus,” which was organized in 2015 to
move the Republican Party farther to the right. Its first chair was Jim Jordan;
its second was Mark Meadows. Its third was Andy Biggs. Mick Mulvaney, who would
go on to Trump’s White House, and Ron DeSantis, who is now governor of Florida,
were key organizers.
Let’s
be clear: the people working to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of
the people were trying to destroy our democracy. Not one of them, or any of
those who plotted with them, called out the illegal attempt to destroy our
government.
To
what end did they seek to overthrow our democracy?
The
current Republican Party has two wings: one eager to get rid of any regulation
of business, and one that wants to get rid of the civil rights protections that
the Supreme Court and Congress began to put into place in the 1950s. Business
regulation is actually quite popular in the U.S., so to build a political
following, in the 1980s, leaders of the anti-regulation wing of the Republican
Party promised racists and the religious right that they would stomp out the
civil rights legislation that since the 1950s has tried to make all Americans
equal before the law.
But
even this marriage has not been enough to win elections since most Americans
like business regulation and the protection of things like the right to use
birth control. So, to put its vision into place, the Republican Party has now
abandoned democracy. Its leaders have concluded that any Democratic victory is
illegitimate, even if voters have clearly chosen a Democrat, as they did with
Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes.
Former
speechwriter for George W. Bush David Frum wrote in 2018: "If
conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will
not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And here we are.
As
if to illustrate this point, news broke today that
a North Carolina official threatened to fire an election official unless she
gave him access to the county’s vote tabulators. The news agency Reuters noted
that this threat was only one of more than 900 instances of intimidation of
election officials in what has become commonplace after the 2020 election.
It
appears that elected officials of the Republican Party are willing to overturn
a legitimate Democratic victory to guarantee that only a Republican can hold
office. That means a one-party state, which will be overseen by a single,
powerful individual. And the last 59 days in Ukraine have illustrated exactly
what that kind of a system means.
Standing
against that authoritarianism, Democratic president Joe Biden is trying to
reassure Americans that democracy works. He insisted on using the government to
support ordinary Americans rather than the wealthy, and in his first year in
office, poverty in the United States declined, with lower-income Americans
gaining more than at any time since the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s.
Lower-income workers have more job opportunities than they have had for 30
years, and they are making more money. They have on average 50% more money in
the bank than they did when the pandemic hit.
Biden’s
insistence on investing in Americans meant that by the end of his first year,
the U.S. had created 6.6 million jobs, the strongest record of any president
since record keeping began in 1939. By the beginning of April, the economy had
added 7.9 million jobs, and unemployment was close to a 50-year low at 3.6%.
Meanwhile, the deficit is dropping; we should carve $1.3 trillion off it this
year.
Biden’s
deliberate reshaping of the American government to work for ordinary Americans
again, regulating business and using the federal government to enforce equal
rights, so threatens modern Republicans that they are willing to destroy our
country rather than allow voters to keep people like Biden in power.
I
do not believe that most Americans want a dictatorship in which a favored few
become billionaires while the rest of us live without the civil rights that
have been our norm since the 1950s, and no voting rights to enable us to change
our lot.
Tonight, news broke
that Democrats in Utah have voted to back independent candidate Evan McMullin
for senator rather than run their own candidate. McMullin is trying to unseat
Republican Senator Mike Lee, whose texts to Meadows as they conspired to
overturn the election have lately drawn headlines. Democrats are gambling that
there are enough Democrats, Independents, and anti-Trump Republicans in Utah to
send Lee packing.
—Heather
Cox Richardson
Notes:
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/lower-income-americans-gains-biden-20220421.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/business/joe-biden-jobs-record/index.html
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/oct/13/gop-has-given-up-on-democracy/
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-04-01/bidens-deceptively-strong-economy
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/biden-popular-vote-margin-7-million/index.html
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