Donald Trump’s Iowa rally over the weekend stands out, Dean Obeidallah writes at CNN. The Republican Party has put behind the unpleasantness of Jan. 6 and slipped deeper into Trumpism. Multiple GOP pols who in January blamed Trump’s incitement for the assault on the Capitol attended the rally to make obeissance before their liege lord. Among Republicans in attendance were Iowa US Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson.
Obeidallah calls out Grassley:
The most hypocritical of the bunch is Sen. Grassley, who on January 6 was escorted by his security detail to a secure location to protect him from the pro-Trump mob that had laid siege on the Capitol. Grassley, who voted to certify the 2020 election, made a veiled reference to Trump in his statement, noting that the lawsuits filed after the election had failed and that “politicians in Washington should not second guess the courts once they have ruled.”
Grassley issued a statement in February calling out Trump for trying to undermine certification of election results and to dispute the determination of multiple courts. Trump “belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way,” Grassley said. “He encouraged his own, loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count.” Trump along with the riotersbore responsibility for the Capitol attack.
But by Saturday, all was forgiven. Grassley was there to accept Trump’s endorsement as just good politics: “If I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart.”
Hinson too had in January issued a statement placing responsibilty on Trump for both his actions and inaction that day. She was there nonetheless on Saturday.
Obeidallah continues:
You don’t need to be a historian to recognize the danger in a political party showing blind loyalty to one person. These GOP elected officials just several months ago rightly criticized Trump and his role in the false election claims that led to the January 6 attack. With their presence at his rally this weekend, it seems they’ve now changed their tune.
“Flexibility is the first principle of politics,” Richard Nixon once told a staffer. It may be the only principle Republicans have left.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) reflected on what has become of the Republican Party on “Face the Nation” Sunday. Host Margaret Brennan asked about the Democrats’ efforts to advance legislation without cooperation from Republicans. Doesn’t that make it appear that “Washington’s not working again”?
Schiff responded that the Republican Party has become “an autocratic cult around Donald Trump … not interested in governing.”
“It’s not interested in even maintaining the solvency in the credit worthiness of the country. And we have to recognize that they’re not interested in governing. And so we’re going to govern, we’re going to have to do it. And if we have to do it with our own votes, we will do that.”
Democrats are tasked with demonstrating “that democracy delivers, that it can help people put food on the table, that it can address these huge disparities in income.” Democracy’s fragility means Democrats must not only deliver on that, but “also on voting rights and stop these efforts to disenfranchise people.”
More distressing is how the Republican Party “has made itself an anti-truth, anti-democratic cult of the former president,” Schiff said, “and the responsibility is on that party to once again become a party of ideas.”
He is being over-generous. Schiff admits that people he once respected because he believed they believed their own rhetoric “turned out not to believe it at all. That the only thing that they cared about was the maintenance of their power or position.”
Grassley, et al. demonstrated again on Saturday that flexibility is perhaps their only principle, and power their only interest.