“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender …” — Winston Churchill
One thing there is to say about the people attempting to end this almost 250-year experiment in democratic self-rule: They are tenacious. Koch Brothers tenacious. George W. Bush wanting to be a “war president” tenacious. Benghazi tenacious. Coup-plotter tenacious.
The New York Times front-pages a story of how Trump loyalists fought not just to spread Trump’s stolen-election lie, but to press at anywhere they thought a soft spot in government where they might gain some advantage in Trump retaining power beyond January 20, 2021. Or else to throw sand into the gears.
Just after Christmas last year an unidentified number on the phone of the Justice Department’s Richard P. Donoghue turned out to be Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican. Perry had “compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet.” He was yet another obscure but loyal foot soldier pressing the president’s case with anyone who might listen and among a half dozen doing so:
The lawmakers — all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus — worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.
The men were not alone in their efforts — most Republican lawmakers fell in line behind Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, at least rhetorically — but this circle moved well beyond words and into action. They bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities. They pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results. They plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Other names are more familiar: Jordan, Biggs, Gosar, Goehmert, Brooks.
Congressional Republicans have fought the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation at every turn, but it is increasingly clear that Mr. Trump relied on the lawmakers to help his attempts to retain power. When Justice Department officials said they could not find evidence of widespread fraud, Mr. Trump was unconcerned: “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” he said, according to Mr. Donoghue’s notes of the call.
The rest of the article chronicles steps the group took along with Trump’s dye-drenched attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Team Kraken, to prepare for the final Jan. 6 standoff that ended in riot, mayhem and death and injury at the U.S. Capitol.
Pain-in-the-ass caucus
But even with Watergate-level legal pressures mounting against them, and especially against Freedom Caucus founder and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, the Freedom Caucus is not hunkering down. It is doubling down, looking to expand into the states, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is making headlines in Washington today, but he’s also looking to make a mark on state legislatures, including Georgia’s, with the launch of the State Freedom Caucus Network.
The network will be an extension of the House Freedom Caucus, the group of conservative House members that Meadows once chaired, which has successfully moved the House GOP agenda to the right since it was founded in 2015.
The network will be supported by the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Washington-based non-profit founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint, where Meadows has been a senior partner since leaving the White House earlier this year.
Also on the CPI staff with Meadows is Cleta Mitchell, a prominent Republican attorney who helped Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Meadows, we know, was on the infamous Jan. 2 Trump call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to pressure him to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s win there from November. Trump (and perhaps Meadows as well) is under criminal investigation for election interference over that call to Georgia. Meadows is hardly backing off or avoiding Georgia. He spoke before about 200 at the State Freedom Caucus Network kickoff dinner in Atlanta on Tuesday.
Ed Kilgore adds New York Magazine:
DeMint, the former South Carolina senator and Heritage Foundation president, is probably best known in politics for his espousal of “constitutional conservatism,” that absolutist precursor to Trumpism which held that any means were justified to preserve the eternal policy preferences of the divinely inspired Founders.
The State Freedom Caucus Network will start initially with affiliates in 22 states from Connecticut to Alaska, with representatives attending a gala kickoff dinner in Atlanta. Its stated purpose is to organize “principled, America-First conservatives” to focus on “election integrity, critical race theory, school choice, vaccine mandates, and police reform,” issues where “our nation’s most important battles are taking place in state legislatures.” An unstated purpose is to encourage such pain-in-the-ass tactics as legislative hostage-taking, disruption of routine governing practices, and shakedowns of the “Republican establishment,” while serving as outposts for Trump’s efforts to get back to the White House by book or by crook.
This new organization, which will likely spread to other states soon, will help ensure that Republicans state elected officials can’t get away with simply tugging the forelock to Trump and then getting along with their regular business back home. MAGA agitation is a permanent revolution with foot soldiers wherever cultural resentment and political opportunism meet.
Look, normal is gone and any semblance of it is not coming back soon. Thinking back on the Churchill quote that came to mind this morning (at the top), it is not clear to me whether “We” is those who retain a commitment to democracy or those in Trump’s camp who seem bent on ending it. Perhaps both. Whether the coming political war is civil or Civil remains to be seen. But the “Russians” are clearly massing at the border and prepared for a long fight whether the rest of us want it or not. Ignoring it won’t make it go away. If Democrats and you cannot find the stomach to fight it, pack your bags.