Team American Democracy
When you’re the RNC Chair, you kind of take one for the whole team. — Ronna McDaniel, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” explaining her support for pardons for January 6 insurrectionists.
Wrong answer, Ronna McDaniel! Wrong answer because the sanctity of elections is never a partisan issue.
Color me naive, but I thought the “team,” in a democracy, was the whole country: Team American Democracy!
I know political parties have differences. Working out those differences is the essence of democracy and part of electoral politics. But those differences do not include excusing or forgiving illegalities, such as offering pardons to January 6 insurrectionists, and they do not include overturning free elections. Those differences do not include defending the “team” in ways that undermine American democracy so that the “team” remains in power against the wishes of a majority of voters. And those differences do not include perpetuating the lies and illegal actions of a wannabe dictator.
Apparently, the definition of the “team” has changed since the days of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and Obama. The “team” now means, if I understand McDaniel correctly, total loyalty to a man who places his own self-interest ahead of the country’s. That definition of “team” protects only Donald Trump in his nefarious attempts to turn America from a democracy into an autocracy. That is the tragedy (and disgrace) of McDaniel’s (and the rest of the MAGA crowd’s) misplaced loyalty.
It is not only tragic, but also ironic (to continue with literary metaphors) because the subject of that loyalty, the former president, is incapable or unwilling to return the loyalty. McDaniel is a case in point. She did everything the putative emperor of Mar-a-Lago, demanded, even going so far as to stop using Romney as her middle name at Trump’s request. (McDaniel is the granddaughter of former governor of Michigan and erstwhile presidential candidate George Romney and the niece of Senator Mitt Romney, another former presidential candidate, whom Trump despises.) But all that subservience to the former president did not save Romney’s job as chair of the Republican National Committee. When Trump decided that Romney’s usefulness to him had expired, he engineered her dismissal from the RNC and replacement by his daughter-in-law and other MAGA diehards.
The abject loyalty of McDaniel (and many other Republicans; she is not alone) to Trump reminds me of the reactions of many of the victims of Stalin’s show trials of the 1930s. Tortured into confessing to anti-Soviet crimes they did not commit, many declared, immediately before their executions, their unstinting loyalty to Soviet Communism. Lev Kamenev, an old Bolshevik and Vladimir Lenin’s comrade, said before his verdict was announced, “No matter what my sentence will be, I consider it just.” Kamenev’s “just” sentence was execution. Another defendant, whose death sentence was decided ahead of trial, shouted: “Long live the cause of Marx… Lenin and Stalin.” He remained loyal to Stalin, though Stalin was no longer loyal to him.
Nikolai Bukharin, another old revolutionary who had been with Lenin before, during, and immediately after the Russian Revolution, wrote: “I accept responsibility even for those crimes about which I did not know or about which I did not have the slightest idea.” Bukharin had been so close to Stalin during the early years of the Revolution that he penned a personal plea to the Soviet dictator, using Stalin’s revolutionary nom de plume: “Koba, why do you need me to die?” Stalin had been genuinely fond of Bukharin, according to Stephen Kotkin, Stalin’s most recent biographer. Stalin kept Bukharin’s note in his desk drawer, where it was found after the dictator’s death. But fondness did not keep Stalin from ordering Bukharin’s death.
Trump has not ordered the execution of anyone (as far as we know), at least not yet. But, given his rhetoric (“I am your retribution”) and his pledges to use the power of the presidency for his personal revenge, who knows what will happen if he regains the White House in November’s general election. Show trials in Washington? Gallows on the Capitol lawn? Again? Anything is possible.
While I single out only Ronna McDaniel as an example of someone who exhibits misplaced loyalty, she has many comrades among Republican politicians these days. The number of toadies willing to carry Trump’s water is almost limitless in the Republican Party. (By the way, I agree with George Conway: It is time to stop calling the party of Lincoln the Republican Party. It bears no resemblance to the party Lincoln once headed.)
One of those toadies doing Trump’s bidding is Mike Johnson. As speaker, Johnson has nearly total control over what legislation the House of Representatives will consider. Johnson refuses to introduce a bill to aid Ukraine in its efforts to fight off Russian aggression because Trump admires the dictatorial Russian leader Vladimir Putin and aiding Ukraine contradicts Trump’s “America First” ethos. Repelling Russian aggression and supporting a rules-based system of international law once was a given for the Republican Party. But not in the age of Trump. We know on which team Johnson is. (It is not Team American Democracy!)
And on what team are Senate Republicans? Last month, the Senate Republican conference killed a bipartisan bill addressing the broken immigration system because Trump wants immigration to remain a political issue come November. Senate Republicans did this even though the bill — worked out with the etensive involvement of Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma — gave Republicans virtually everything they were demanding. But a solution on immigration did not fit Trump’s agenda, so the border will remain a mess for many more months because Team Trump is not the same as Team American Democracy.
One last thing about Ronna McDaniel (at least for now): Former representative Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair of the House January 6 committee, put McDaniel’s comment on taking “one for the team” in its proper perspective. “Ronna facilitated Trump’s corrupt fake elector plot & his effort to pressure [Michigan] officials not to certify the legitimate election outcome. She spread his lies & called 1/6 ‘legitimate political discourse.’ That’s not ‘taking one for the team.’ It’s enabling criminality & depravity.”
And, I might add, it is enabling the potential success of a man whose election could well mean the end of American democracy.
Which team are you on?
Posted March 26, 2024