The WaPo’s Karen Tumulty says what many others in the MSM are afraid to say and she’s absolutely right:
After nearly three dozen GOP members joined Democrats in the House last week to approve the proposed commission, the former president issued a statement blasting those “35 wayward Republicans” and warning of “consequences to being ineffective and weak.”
Their counterparts in the Senate got the message. Republicans quake at the thought of doing anything that might cause Mt. Trump to erupt.
But there is an even darker reason to explain why they appear less concerned about paying a price for failing to reckon with what happened on Jan. 6, which was also an assault on the integrity of this country’s democratic processes.
The more dangerous truth is that a not-insignificant portion of the GOP’s Trumpian base actually appears to believe that the violent mob was justified in its effort to disrupt Congress as it conducted its pro forma tally of the electoral votes that made Joe Biden the 46th president.
These are the people who have bought into Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and who share at least some of the unhinged theories that fuel the QAnon movement.
A new poll released by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core shows that these dangerous and conspiratorial beliefs are not confined to the country’s dank backwaters.
Fully 20 percent of more than 5,500 adults questioned in all 50 states — and 28 percent of Republicans among them — said they agreed with the statement that “there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.”
Even more worrisome were the 15 percent overall — and, again, 28 percent of Republicans — who were of the opinion that because “things have gotten so off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
What Republicans made clear with their vote on Friday is that they would rather allow this thinking to fester within their base, and hope that it works to their electoral advantage, than to stand up to it.
McConnell may be right that dodging and delaying accountability for what happened on Jan. 6 could help Republicans win back power in Congress. But by standing in the way of a reckoning with the poisonous forces that are growing within the ranks of their own party, they are doing a disservice to the country — one for which democracy itself will ultimately pay a price.
I think it’s important that Tumulty and other members of the establishment press are willing to call this out. It wasn’t long ago that they would have been very reluctant to even see this much less admit it. But I will go a step further. They are traitors. There’s no longer any doubt about that. And these traitors are more than willing to play with the fire that Donald Trump lit.
Expect more violence. And expect these people to excuse it — or embrace it. They have crossed that rubicon and I don’t expect them to turn around and go back.