The fall-out from the Roe vs Wade decision to ban abortions has over-shadowed the hearings on the Trump-led attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and, in the fifth hearing, to undermine the integrity of the U.S. Department of Justice in a failed Hail Mary plot. Nonetheless, the beneficial fallout from the House hearing’s dissection of Trump’s desperate plan to stay in power continues.
For example, now that multiple Republican leaders, many of them Trump appointees, have testified under oath that the “stolen election” was in truth a well-run election, should not Rep. Tim Ramthun (R-Campbellsport) withdraw from the race for Wisconsin governor?
His whole campaign has been based on the trumped-up contention that the presidential election in favor of Joe Biden was fraudulent. He won’t drop out though. He loves the limelight, even though he was virtually invisible at the GOP summit in La Crosse last weekend. It’s hard to admit you were totally, unequivocally wrong.
The other three Republican candidates for governor also bought into the former president’s seditious campaign. They won’t recant on their support, but in the face of withering congressional testimony that made the Big Lie untenable, they will quietly retreat from that issue.
It is now inescapably clear that the former president can’t tell fact from fiction and doesn’t really want to. And the GOP now knows it.
Indeed, some legal voices see his actions to overturn the election as criminal. Further, potential charges against Trump come from a number of different prosecutors. I’m not a lawyer, but as a pragmatist, do the GOP candidates want to get caught up in his web of lies prior to the general election next fall?
Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, not known for his judicious, thoughtful stances on the big issues of the day, has ensnarled himself in the attempt at a bloodless coup. He is lamely blaming it on his staff, but he has been outed as a party trying to pass a slate of phony Wisconsin electors to Vice President Pence the day of the Jan. 6 congressional certification of Biden’s victory.
Why would he do that? Why would he put himself and the 10 heretofore honorable GOP Wisconsin partisans in a position of seditious liability?
They were, in effect, trying to nullify your vote and mine and toss it to a secretive direction. What was Sen. Johnson thinking?
The huge irony for the GOP in this obsessive machination by Trump is that the party doesn’t need his help.
President Biden’s tone deafness is giving the Republicans all the leverage they need to win House and Senate seats this fall. He has mis-stepped badly on over-stimulating the COVID recovery and on the mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan.
On the positive side, he has restored decency to the presidency, and he has been impressive in putting together the NATO/EU coalition against Putin in the Ukraine war.
Biden has a mixed-bag record in his early presidency. The GOP can run a legitimate campaign against him. They don’t need the backing of a loser who can’t concede his loss – to the great damage to our vulnerable democracy.
Memo to GOP hopefuls: Drop the crutch. Run on your own merits. Separate yourselves from the sedition that has invaded the DNA of your party. Cut out the cancer.
Tell us what you will do to get inflation under control, to tame unbearable health costs, to manage illegal immigration, to protect the challenged Great Lakes, to establish a customized education/career path for each student to help solve the labor shortage, to restore some semblance of unity to the country.
Look to Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as the leading lights out of the darkness that has cloaked your party’s true character.
Because of their leadership of the hearings, both have received death threats for taking on Trump.
Shun the House GOP congressmen who asked for a pardon in the election aberration.
