Sen. Mitt Romney’s vote to impeach President Trump last year, and his Jan. 3 comments on the misguided efforts of Republicans to overthrow a presidential election are examples of moral courage. Other Republican leaders need to immediately follow his example. Romney stated:
“The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic. ... Members of Congress who would substitute their own partisan judgement for that of the courts do not enhance public trust. They imperil it.”
Trump gave a speech Wednesday that primed supporters who later that day broke into the U.S. Capitol. The seeds of falsehood that Trump and his Republican allies have sown for months have damaged democracy for years to come by provoking the president’s supporters to doubt the outcome of a fair presidential election.
Many Republican senators and congressional representatives have passively or actively given gas to Trump’s coup attempts, even if only by not opposing him in his efforts to overturn the presidential election out of fear of retaliation or because of their own raw political ambitions.
In the hierarchy of virtues, honesty outranks personal loyalty in public service. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell found his own belated courage Wednesday as he warned of dire consequences if Republicans continue to undermine the integrity of our elections:
“We’re debating a step that has never been taken in American history, whether Congress should overrule the voters and overturn a presidential election. I’ve served 36 years in the Senate. This will be the most important vote I’ve ever cast. President Trump claims the election was stolen. ... Dozens of lawsuits received hearings in courtrooms all across our country, but over and over, the courts rejected these claims, including all-star judges whom the president himself has nominated. ... The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. They’ve all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever.”
Other Republican leaders need to now find a repentant courage to stand for democracy and a peaceful transfer of presidential power by confessing their own failings and then act to hold President Trump and their insurrectionist colleagues accountable for their roles in inciting the president’s supporters by repeating his false claims.
The president’s congressional supporters who joined him in spreading unsubstantiated and false claims simply cannot declare that those who broke into the Capitol Wednesday should be prosecuted and yet absolve themselves from responsibility for inciting insurrection. Many Americans were deceived by them and the president to act erroneously, imagining they were protecting democracy even as they acted as dupes of the president in his latest coup attempt.
GOP leaders can begin rebuilding their integrity by taking every opportunity to reassure conservative American voters that the 2020 presidential election results were accurate and that Trump is lying about his election loss.
Some may say that telling the truth to conservative American voters is a naive a strategy. Think again. In the 1950s, Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, was lead counsel to Joseph McCarthy, a Republican senator who insisted there was a communist conspiracy in the U.S. government. Cohn’s and McCarthy’s reign of terror destroyed the lives and careers of hundreds.
Trump’s tactics of lying, baseless accusations, punishing disloyalty are a “red scare” reboot pulled right out of the Cohn-McCarthy playbook. Only when McCarthy’s Senate colleagues held fact-finding hearings and censured him, declaring McCarthy’s behavior “inexcusable,” “reprehensible,” “vulgar and insulting and “unbecoming” of a person who held public office did McCarthy lose power. By time the hearings were over most of McCarthy’s allies had abandoned him.
When Republicans find the courage to talk in terms facts and truth and condemn Trump’s dishonesty and self serving behavior as”inexcusable,” “reprehensible,” “vulgar and insulting” and “unbecoming” of a man who serves as president, only then will Trump lose his chokehold on conservative voters and the GOP.
Moral courage and honesty are the only effective strategy that will heal a divided nation and force Trump and Trumpism to retreat into the history books to find their place of infamy alongside McCarthyism. Perhaps even Roy Cohn would find that a fitting end to Donald Trump’s destructive political career.
Eric Hubner
Eric Hubner, Volcano, Hawai’i, received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brigham Young University, as well as a master of social work degree from the State University of New York. He is a retired mental health therapist and school social worker, who also worked in the addiction field and coordinated services for families at risk of child abuse and neglect.
