Of course I believe it’d be wrong to thwart investigations into criminal acts that took place on 1/6; but: once that’s been granted, what further stance against minimization are you hoping for?
And while I’m glad, for the moment, to keep from resorting to both-sides arguments, I’m not sure how I can respond to possible follow-up accusations without explaining that, no, I would, and do, say the same thing if the situation were reversed; even if it’s not a perfect match, consider the following situations, in which I‘d want harsh penalties applied to the lawbreakers and then I probably wouldn’t bother to talk in terms of wrongdoing when it comes to people who (a) agree that the law should come down like a hammer on the lawbreakers but who (b) could nevertheless be accused of minimization…
Just one quibble – you say “it’d,” as in “it would,” but this thwarting is actually happening right now, with Trump administration folks ignoring subpeonas, the GOP ostracizing their own people working on the committee investigating Jan. 6, and most recently the vile “legitimate political discourse” angle. Not just random whackjobs – the actual Republican party.
So, would you agree that this current, actual behavior by the entire GOP is wrong?
Hard for the Republicans of today to grumble against those elected yahoos that still approve and sign into law stupid rules that go against history and not against the fake idea that they have about CRT, they also are discouraging vaccinations and mask use in schools too.
I can say, wholeheartedly, that it’s wrong for “Trump administration folks” to ignore subpoenas — and, for you to take me seriously, I’m maybe not allowed to follow that up by asking you about the wrongness of a Democrat ignoring a subpoena — and then you ask about behavior “by the entire GOP” right after you note that some of “their own people” are working on the committee investigating the crimes on 1/6. If I hear a GOPer — possibly one on said committee — say something I agree with, I’ll say so; and if I hear one say something else, I’ll, uh, say so.
So if you’re so inclined, bring a specific remark by a GOPer to my attention and I’ll let you know what I think of it (even while, for the time being, I’ll keep obligingly refraining from asking you about positions taken by Democrats, due to your concerns about both-sides arguments).
Well, do you agree with what Republicans in the January 6 committee said?:
In remarks to Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, ahead of the vote, Kinzinger said he doesn’t “have a tribe,” but “the good thing is, I don’t really care.”
“The only reason this hurts me is that it reminds me of how frigging crazy the Republican Party has become,” he said, according to Goldberg. “It’s not my tribe anymore.”
On Thursday, the RNC’s resolutions committee unanimously voted to advance the censure resolution to the entire body, prompting Cheney to skewer members of the committee.
“I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump,” she added. “History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what.”
Or do you agree with what the Republicans leaders and a lot of the rank and file are saying?
You quote one as saying he doesn’t have a tribe, and the other one as saying she’ll never stop fighting for our constitutional republic, and I — agree with both?
Since the attack on the Capitol wasn’t legitimate political discourse, I very much want those lawbreakers to get locked up or sentenced to hard labor or executed; and, if someone who agrees with that then goes on to add that we should draw a line between people who attacked the Capitol and people who engaged in legitimate political discourse but didn’t attack the Capitol, then I’m going to — agree, I guess? As long as we’re simpatico on that first part, I honestly can’t see a way to disagree about splitting that hair on the second part.
Good, just remember that chances are that you voted then for guys that agree with the Republican leadership rather than what the Republican committee members said.
And, while you do want to add a line to what the Republican resolution said to say that you agree, the reality is that they did not bother to do so.
That would require a complete 180 from the way the party is today.
Republicans have embraced the idea that, “If I don’t get your vote, nobody does!” They even formalized the plan in Project Red State. They don’t want minorities to vote for them, or at least they don’t want to try to get them to vote for them, because they can’t make it work.
And the issue is that there are enough non-whites that vote overwhelmingly for Democrats right now, the demographics have already shifted, that a Republican has not won the popular vote in a presidential election since 2004 (George W. Bush’s second election), and that was by less than a percentage point; it was almost dead even. Prior to that practical tie in the popular vote, you have to go back to 1988 when George H. W. Bush won. So that means that the Republicans have not won the popular vote in a presidential election by more than 7/10 of a percentage in more than 30 years.
(It’s worth noting that Bill Clinton never won the popular vote either, but he still significantly beat his Republican challenger by a good margin. Ross Perot as a third party candidate took a good chunk in each of those races also.)
I think that it’s too late for the Republicans. Maybe in a couple of generations they could flip around but by then they’d have lost so much ground to the Democrats that they’d be irrelevant. I think it more likely that a new party would rise up and take its place. I have absolutely no idea what that party would look like. But it would happen. Maybe it would even come from the Democrats themselves.
But I think it would come up in reaction to an issue that many people think the Democrats are on the wrong side of. Something significant and urgent. The Republican Party was originally created to stop the expansion of slavery across America (in the form of the Kansas-Nebraska Act), and then to abolition of it. I think it would have to be something along those lines.
Rod Dreher of The American Conservative penned a piece today (from Hungary, during another visit with his hero Orban) that he was outraged by the Jan. 6 riot and by Republican obstruction of the investigation. But he was still planning to vote Republican in the foreseeable future because, overall, Democrats are still so much worse.
I noted the clarification at the time, and agreed with the condemnation of the acts of violence, and agreed with taking a position against violently storming the Capitol, and also agreed that a distinction should be drawn between those who did not commit violence and those who did. And, as it happens, I was watching FACE THE NATION this morning, and they asked Marco Rubio pretty much this — and he of course prefaced his remarks with a quick “Well, anybody who committed crimes on January 6th should be prosecuted. If you entered the Capitol and you committed acts of violence and you were there to hurt people, you should be prosecuted and they are being prosecuted.” And I of course found myself agreeing with that line as well; bother to add it in and it gets my agreement, just like that.
I wonder if you can point to a case of someone who did NOT attack the Capitol, was just in the crowd at the speech on Jan 6, and has been charged or accused of a crime.
In other words, the line between people who attacked the Capitol and others HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE. There has never been an argument that says anyone who was listening to Trump that day should be jailed.
What you have appeared to have missed is that the current GOP leadership actually wants to blur that line, and to lump everyone into the “they did nothing wrong” category, including those who attacked police, broke into the building, shat on the floors etc. I’m sure you can see the blindingly obvious here.
Yes, they want everyone who was at the insurrection that day to be “involved in legitimate political discourse” They are deliberately conflating the groups. They are clear that they do not want investigations into ANYONE WHATSOEVER who was involved in crimes. They have made this explicit by their actions.
You can bat your eyes all you want, and pretend not to understand what they are saying, but it’s patently obvious.
It seems to me that you are deliberately ignoring all of the subtext and are relying on a strict linguistic parsing of the specific words.
Let’s see where the disagreement sets in: I quoted Rubio as saying “Well, anybody who committed crimes on January 6th should be prosecuted. If you entered the Capitol and you committed acts of violence and you were there to hurt people, you should be prosecuted and they are being prosecuted.” What, exactly, do you take that to mean?
Yes, that is what YOU think. This is good. Everyone should be thinking along these lines. The GOP does not think this way, however.
However, the GOP leadership wants to make it clear that they do not want ANY investigation into Jan 6, and they want us to think that everyone there was involved in "legitimate political discourse’. In other words, they want to blur the lines between participants that day.
Given that you and the GOP are so far apart on this important issue, I expect that you will not support them going forward.
TBH, I’m done caring about what happens to the people who actually broke into the Capitol and committed crimes, and with drawing distinctions between them and other protestors who had the sense to stay out on the street.
No, I mostly care about the plotters in Trump’s circle and Congress who provoked the events in an attempt to overturn the election. That’s what the committee is investigating, that’s where the power of the DOJ should be focused, and that’s exactly the effort that the mainstream GOP (with a few notable exceptions) is looking to discredit, divert and ultimately shut down.
Sorry, but that will not do, I have seen this rodeo many times before.
What you saw Rubio and others do was for consumption of others that bother to follow regular news and to appease the ones that think that they are moderates. In reality, the results are to be expected: that rank and file will see only the part where the leadership agrees with the insurrection guys. Not the feeble explanations.
I mean, how many times I have heard that bit about “if you have to explain it, you lose the argument?” This is similar, but with an added difference, like the explanation about Trump and many “enlighten” republicans said about the “Covid was a hoax” line, they tried to say that it referred to what the Democrats were saying about what Trump was doing regarding the pandemic.
The reality was that a big mess of Conservatives still followed the idea that yep, covid was/is a hoax. Likewise, what you report here is really useless as a way to control the damage resolutions like that do, and I will have to say it: They do know what they are doing, they do fool many moderate republicans into thinking that they do good with their clarifications, when in reality they are letting the most ugly meanings to fester in talk radio and anti-social media and in private. And I will have to say that most of the leadership do know what is taking place, and they like that.