The only "lesson" Republicans learned from past events is how to be "led" by the leash by Trump and his gang of voters

 

Except for a handful of Republicans in Congress, it doesn’t appear that many learned any lessons from recent events, or at least not the “right” lessons. There are those still “trumpeting” the party line that the election was “stolen” from Donald Trump; remember that just 20 minutes after the Pacific coast polls closed, Trump announced that all voting should stop right then because he had won the election—no need to count any more. This was a simply outrageous statement to make, but it was predictable given Trump’s fear of failure, and we know with certainty that he would have been of an entirely different mind if he had been behind in battleground states at that point. Trump was ahead in the countless smaller, rural Republican districts whose votes were tabulated faster, but massively behind in the larger urban districts whose votes were slower to come in. That’s just common sense, but “logic” and “common sense” are things that we just don’t associate with the majority of Republicans these days.

Save perhaps for the ten who voted to impeach Trump, Republicans in the House of Representatives are a lost cause, voted in by people who think that Bill Gates must have created the “fake snow” that pummeled Texas, engaging in demonstrations that allegedly show snow balls “burning” while being lit by BIC lighters; what they claimed was “evidence” of burning “snow” was actually carbon ash from the butane fuel. That is just how stupid not just how some Republican voters talk, but worse, how they think. Of course the less said about the presence of QAnon nutjobs like Marjorie Taylor Greene and paranoid gun fanatic Lauren Boebert the better, but it gives pause to wonder who should be allowed to vote in the first place.

Most Republicans in the  allegedly more “mature” and “deliberate” U.S. Senate are not that much better, as evidence by Ron Johnson, who stomped upon the remnants of whatever claim to sanity he has when in yesterday’s committee hearings on the security breakdown during the January 6 insurrection, quoted some absurd claims from  a known far-right commentator named J. Michael Waller, who “questioned” the “true identities” of the Capitol rioters, asserting than no “conservative” or Trump supporter would engage in violence or show contempt for law enforcement. That flew in the face of video evidence of people who were clearly Trump supporters showing something considerably less than respect in their interactions with police, ignoring their commands and bull rushing through them into the building, and deliberately injuring officers who tried to do their “job” to protect legislators and the grounds.

Johnson’s ridiculous assertions were quickly shot down by the law enforcement officials testifying at the hearing; the attitude toward “peace” and law enforcement as expressed by “Angry Hippie Mother” and fanatical Trumpist Suzanne Kaye was more typical of those present at the riot: “You think I’m going to let you come talk to me? I’m an American. I know my rights. My First Amendment right to free speech, my Second Amendment right to carry a gun to shoot your fucking ass if you come to my house.”

It should also be pointed out that groups like far-right domestic terrorists like the “boogaloo boys” specifically targeted and murdered security and law enforcement officers in California last year, while the “freedom-loving” right-wing militias in the Oregon wildlife refuge standoff, and neo-Nazi groups like The Order were openly at “war” with government law enforcement officers; The Order’s leader, Robert Mathews, died in a massive one-man shootout against federal agents in his “safe house” on Whidbey Island, Washington in 1984. Mathews was finally “neutralized” after firing off 1,000 rounds before flares ignited boxes of hand grenades and his still massive stash of ammunition. The reality is that right-wing support of law enforcement is contingent on the expectation that they will operate as a shield against the “others”—i.e. minorities—and if they in anyway appear to be “protecting” institutions that white nationalist types see as a “threat” to their hegemony, then law enforcement becomes a “legitimate” target as well. That is what we saw on January 6.

While Johnson was spinning conspiratorial nonsense, Josh Hawley was “outraged” that anyone would dare accuse him of any complicity in inciting the riots, instead chose to hypocritically attack those very people he had given a fist pump to just before they invade the Capitol building, an action they rightly took as a sign that he supported whatever action they were about to take. Hawley may claim that he had no clue what they were about to do, but his refusal to protect the institutions of government by doubling-down and declaring the election was “stolen” only showed that he had not learned any lessons about violent words leading to violent action. His behavior and claims that it did not amount to “complicity” that the three principles responsible for Capitol security ignored FBI warnings of an imminent violent attack was, as his home state newspaper The Kansas City Star declared, “an indirect way to defend his own actions leading up to Jan. 6.”

As one would expect, everyone responsible is blaming everybody else, and the DC police apparently had no standard operating procedure on how to handle a riot of this nature, or pretended not to have one. Indeed there was incompetence and lack of foresight from everyone, the Capitol Police, the DC Police, the National Guard, and the Department of Defense. But let us recall where this all began, and Trump’s first response to the insurrection: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” There can be a no clearer statement of support for the insurrection, the “reasons” that it "had" to happen, and Trump’s estimation of the rioters. It only adds to the hypocrisy of the claims by the likes of Ted Cruz, Hawley and Johnson, twisting and turning in bizarre, unrecognizable shapes defending not just themselves but Trump.

This is not to say that the Republicans in the U.S. Senate cannot find their “way” again as a “united” party. They are already doing that in refusing to support Biden’s Covid-19 stimulus package—or any of his proposals simply because the game is to make the other party look as bad as possible. This is why Democrats have to take advantage of the next two years when they are assured control of Senate. It is useful not to have “great expectations” in times of governmental shift, because the partisan dynamics stay the same.

The last time there was a major shift in party balance was during the Great Depression, when Republicans were severely punished across the country for their failure to address the misery of the people, and they fell from 270 House seats in the 1928 election, to only 88 seats in the 1936 election.  We are not quite at that point, but Republicans will go as far into the abyss as their most psychologically unbalanced voters will take them, come hell or high water. This isn’t “leadership,” this is being “led” to parts no one can predict. To quote a Bruce Springsteen song, “Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.” That’s how the Republican Party will continue to function as long as it lives in that insane fantasy that is Trumpworld.