Republicans' tendentious two-step
In the wake of the Donald Trump-incited riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, supporters of the former president deployed the usual two-step playbook when Trump makes an indefensible blunder. First, they hid. CNN’s Jake Tapper told viewers last week, “We invited every single Republican senator to join us this morning. Every one of them declined or failed to respond.” This week, they emerged for the second step: Deflect, and protect Trump from having to suffer any consequences.
“It’s a moot point” whether Trump committed an impeachable offense, argued Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “For right now, I think there are other things that we’d rather be working on instead.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sounded a similar note on “Fox News Sunday,” even as he acknowledged Trump bears “responsibility for some of what happened” at the Capitol. “I think the trial is stupid. I think it’s counterproductive,” Rubio said. “We already have a flaming fire in this country, and it’s like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.”
To extend Rubio’s analogy, though, discarding the House’s impeachment article now is like saying the person who helped set the fire shouldn’t face consequences because his friends might be upset. And after several days of Republicans dismissing President Biden’s first actions as being of the “radical left,” as Rubio did on Friday, it’s unconvincing to turn around and feign interest in working with the new White House.
But as weak as Rubio and Rounds’s arguments were, no one deflected more flagrantly than Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on ABC’s “This Week.” Host George Stephanopoulos began by asking, “This election was not stolen, do you accept that fact?” Paul refused. “We never had any presentation in court where we actually looked at the evidence,” he said. “Most of the cases were thrown out for lack of standing, which is a procedural way of not actually hearing the question.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/24/republicans-tendentious-two-step/
= new reply since forum marked as read
That’s why no judge ever looked at it.
Rand ... you suck!
-Laelth
