It’s Official, the RNC Joins the Insurrection, Redefines GOP As Groveling Obeisance [To Trump] Party

Mark February 4, 2022 on the calendar. It’s another one of those dates which defines a moment of lasting resonance in our history, as July 4, September 2, December 7, January 6 and a handful of others do. Today is the day that the Grand Old Party ceased to exist and the new GOP, the Groveling Obeisance (to Trump) Party coalesced in the form of the censure against Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

The significance of this censure cannot be overstated, because its not about the censure of two Republicans so much as its about the acceptance of the insurrection as “ordinary citizens engaged in political discourse.” That is a phrase straight out of right-wing revisionist propaganda and now it is the official stance of the GOP on the matter.

The censure drew raised eyebrows from the very beginning. Trump toady David Bossie drafted it and in its original form it was a resolution to expel both congressmembers from the Republican party. The initial take people had was that it was the Trump faction of the GOP going for the gusto. Now it is clear: there is no “Trump faction.” There is only the Party of Trump. New York Times:

The Republican National Committee’s overwhelming voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it.

On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

It was an extraordinary statement about the deadliest attack on the Capitol in 200 years, in which a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the complex, brutalizing police officers and sending lawmakers into hiding. Nine people died in connection with the attack and more than 150 officers were injured. The party passed the resolution without discussion and almost without dissent.

I will give it up to Mitt Romney for sounding like a recognizable Republican, instead of this group of mutants that voted today.

Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, wrote on Twitter, “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.” He did not mention that the party chairwoman who presided over the meeting and orchestrated the censure resolution, Ronna McDaniel, is his niece.

I believe that history will record that Romney was the last of the Republicans. He was certainly the last person the GOP put on its ballot that was a recognizable type. Between 2012 and 2016 the party crawled off in a corner and died.

And this censure is not happening in a vacuum. Oh, no. It is happening in the midst of daily crazy quips from Donald Trump via his Twitter spokesperson. The timing of this makes at least as much of a statement as the censure itself. Charlie Sykes, the Bulwark:

The timing of the resolution is notable — coming just days after Donald Trump dangled pardons for the insurrectionists who tried to help him overturn the election, and just days after he threatened mass unrest if prosecutors try to hold him accountable. It comes the week we learned of Trump’s push to have the government seize voting machines, and got more details about his plan to use faked and forged electoral vote certificates to force Mike Pence to overturn the election.

And it comes as Trump continues to ratchet up his lies about his electoral defeat.

But at the RNC meeting there was, of course, no discussion of censuring the former president for any of this.

That never came up. Nobody even thought of it.

Nor was there even the slightest suggestion that perhaps the party should distance itself from the bizarre bigoted rantings of MTG, or Paul Gosar, or Lauren Boebert, or Madison Cawthorn.

The purge came only for Cheney and Kinzinger. Because, of course, this Republican party now has one standard, and one standard only: loyalty to the exiled Orange God King and his ongoing obstruction of justice.

Originally, there had been some thought that the RNC would call on the House Republican Conference to expel the the two dissenters, but that move was watered down to a censure resolution that manages to be both meaningless and revealing.

Today’s resolution is strictly symbolic — a performative act of groveling to the defeated, disgraced, twice-impeached former president.

Given the party’s reflexive obeisance to the former president it feels like an homage to Groundhog Day. How many times will they censure the dissenters; how many excommunications will be issued, anathemata hurled, or wrists limply slapped?

So nothing was accomplished and nothing changed. Except . . . it all turns out to be worse than you thought.

This is how the Republican National Committee will describe the investigation into the violent attack on the Capitol that left at least five dead and hundreds — many of them police officers — wounded: “Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse….”

Nota bene: “persecution.”

“Ordinary citizens.”

“Legitimate political discourse.”

That’s bad enough. But they go on to broaden the condemnation by declaring that they are also helping “to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes.”

So let’s not put too fine a point on this: The Republican National Committee is fully embracing the Trumpian retconning of Jan. 6th as a peaceful protest and, in the process, has gone all-in on the insurrection itself.

It is decisively not “moving on,” from 2020, or Trump’s obsession relitigation of his defeat.

This is the point of no return. Cooler heads in the GOP have been calling to move on for some time now. In recent weeks it’s been said that Mitch McConnell has had his fill and wants to move on from Trump and that Ron DeSantis is being groomed as Trump’s replacement. That was all good speculation and certainly welcome to hear, but as of this moment it looks like it was wishful thinking.

Take a look at this. This says it all.

So this is something https://t.co/CfrhwNjmnL pic.twitter.com/SidaYWfgm5

— David Byler (@databyler) January 5, 2022

The jello has hardened and it is orange. This is who the GOP is. All of this fantasizing about the party moving on from Trump is only that. Strong man, crazy man Trump is approved of by more than 80 percent of Republicans. As Michael Gerson of the Washington Post put it recently, “A man who gathered and incited an assault on the U.S. Capitol is approved of by more than 80 percent of Republicans. A man who contemplated a military coup against the Constitution is approved of by more than 80 percent of Republicans. In so many ways, the infection is already deep in the bone.”

The GOP endorses a thug who “attempted to steal an election, employs political violence against opponents, is cultivating GOP governors and state officials to send fake presidential electors to Washington, and is revealing the frightening fragility of the American experiment.”

The GOP went rogue when it put Trump on its ticket in 2016. But today it sold its soul to the great orange Satan. The RNC made it clear today that its direction does not lie in returning to a pre-Trump era. Au contraire, the GOP is in it for keeps now, and Trump is getting crazier all the time.

I fear for what is about to come. The gloves are off and all pretense has been dropped at this point. As Ulysses S. Grant put it, “There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter, and I trust, the stronger party.” My God, I hope he’s right.