Why members of Trump’s 'sedition caucus' are even 'worse than traitors': conservative

Even with President Donald Trump having been voted out of office and President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration just over two weeks away, Trump's supporters continue to impose loyalty tests — and that includes demanding that Republicans refuse to accept the Electoral College results. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former U.S. Attorney General William Barr are now being slammed as RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) by Trumpistas for acknowledging Biden as president-elect. Never Trump conservative Tom Nichols, in a scathing article published by The Atlantic on January 4, slams the Republicans in Congress who have announced their plans to contest the Electoral College results — and he explains why their actions are so anti-democracy.

Nichols, author of the forthcoming book "Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy," emphasizes, "This is sedition, plain and simple. No amount of playacting and rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat. This is not some handful of firebrands making a stand for the television cameras."

The "sedition caucus," Nichols adds, now "includes at least 140 members of the House — that is, some two-thirds of the House GOP membership — and at least 10 members of the Senate."

"Their challenge comes after weeks of insistence that the 2020 election was rigged, plagued by fraud, and even subverted by foreign powers," Nichols observes. "The president and his minions have filed, and lost, scores of lawsuits that ranged from minor disputes over process to childlike, error-filled briefs full of bizarre assertions."

Nichols, in his article, smacks down all the Republican "whataboutists" who are harping on occasional examples of Democrats who contested Electoral College results when Republicans won presidential elections. When that happened from time to time, Nichols notes, it was nowhere near the numbers of Republicans in Congress who are now refusing to acknowledge Biden as president-elect. And Nichols points out that when a few Democrats in Congress objected to the Electoral College tally in January 2017, it was none other than then-Vice President Joe Biden who "gaveled down" their objections.

"It is possible that the sedition caucus knew that all these challenges would fail," Nichols explains. "It is possible that they know their last insult to American democracy, on Wednesday, will go nowhere, as well. This is irrelevant: engaging in sedition for insincere reasons does not make it less hideous. Arguing that you betrayed the Constitution only as theater is no defense. Indeed, shredding the Constitution purely for personal gain is perhaps the worst of the sins of the sedition caucus."

Some critics of Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Josh Hawley have slammed them as "idiots" for refusing to accept the Electoral College's certification of Biden as president-elect, but Nichols disagrees, arguing that Cruz and Hawley are much worse than idiots because they are engaging in a "cold-blooded attack on the Constitution."

"Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are not idiots," Nichols writes. "These are men who understand perfectly well what they are doing. Sen. Mitt Romney sees it clearly, noting that his GOP colleagues are engaged in 'an egregious ploy' to 'enhance political ambition.'"

Nichols wraps up his article by arguing that members of the "sedition caucus" are even lower than "traitors."

"The sedition caucus is worse than a treasonous conspiracy," Nichols stresses. "At least real traitors believe in something. These people instead believe only in their own fortunes and thus, will change flags and loyalties as circumstances require. They will always become what they pretend to be, and so they cannot — and must not — be trusted ever again with political power."