Just a few…
Every once in a while you see an article in right wing media that makes you wonder if there might be some chance that democracy isn’t completely dead in the Republican Party. This is Jay Nordlinger in the National Review:
An article in Politico is headed “DeSantis won’t say if he thinks 2020 was rigged. But he’s campaigning for Republicans who do.” Who are those Republicans? The roster includes Kari Lake in Arizona, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, and J.D. Vance in Ohio.
Was the 2020 election, in fact, rigged? Did the Democrats steal the election from President Trump? Is Joe Biden an illegitimate president? These are burning questions — not trivial ones. The whole country is roiled by them. The belief that the Democrats stole the election led to a physical attack on the U.S. Congress — the worst attack on our capitol since the War of 1812.
And that attack, early in our republic, was carried out by a foreign power, not by homegrown Americans.
In my view, every politician should answer. Answer the questions that are roiling our country. I think it’s especially incumbent on Republican politicians to answer them, because it’s Republican voters who have swallowed the election lie. Have been fed it.
There is an old expression: to “speak truth to power.” Everyone loves speaking truth to power. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do, in a democracy. You know what’s hard? To speak truth to people. For, in a democracy, that’s where power actually lies.
And when people have been lied to — when they’ve been sold a bill of goods — they need to be disabused, by honest people, honest leaders.
I like what Dick Cheney said recently: “A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters.”
So far as I’m aware, Donald Trump has been booed only once — only once by his supporters, I mean, at one of his rallies. It was when he encouraged vaccination against the coronavirus. He also said, when asked, that he had received a booster shot.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, was asked the same question, in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News last December. He said, “So, uh, I’ve done whatever I did, the normal shot, and that at the end of the day is people’s individual decisions about what they want to do.”
In my observation, Republican politicians have been very reluctant to tell their voters whether they have been vaccinated (or “boosted”). Chip Roy, a congressman from Texas, said, “I don’t think it’s anybody’s damn business whether I’m vaccinated or not.”
I took up this subject in a column:
In my opinion, “Are you vaccinated?” is not the equivalent of “Do you have herpes?” A pandemic is plaguing the land, and the world. When I was a kid, there were immunization campaigns. That’s what we called them: “immunization campaigns.” There were always resisters, of course — that’s natural. But the campaigners were not thought to be bad people.
I will quote a little more:
Every now and then, leaders ought to lead (or set an example). (There is an expression: “to lead by example.”) Often, these guys are more followers than leaders.
A little more:
I can think of one politician — a Republican politician — who is forthright about vaccination and its importance: Mitch McConnell. Which makes sense, as he survived childhood polio.
In my book, Republican politicians ought to answer a couple of basic questions, before other questions are asked: Did Joe Biden win the election fair and square? Was January 6 committed by Trump supporters or by Antifa, BLM, or some other left-wing group? (Or the FBI?)
If you can’t answer these questions — honestly, forthrightly — you’re not fit to lead, in my judgment.
Among his fans, Ron DeSantis has the reputation of being a bold politician who “tells it like it is.” Great. Look forward to hearing it.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. When he says he “tells it like it is” what he means is that he lies constantly.
I guess Nordlinger is a Never Trumper so it’s easy to discount his influence. But he published that in the National Review from which most Never Trumpers have been purged. It’s not Fox News or Newsmax so I doubt most GOP voters will read it b
ut it’s good that it’s out there anyway. There might be a few college educated Republican voters left who are realizing that this isn’t just Trump and it’s not going to go away on its own and they will need to make the decision to not vote GOP if they think democracy should be preserved.
*I will just take a moment to observe that Cheney saying that a “real man” wouldn’t lie to his supporters is preposterous coming from the man who leaned on the CIA to say there were weapons on mass destruction in Iraq in order to provide the excuse for a major war.