'Spineless Republicans' show their 'cowardice' by ignoring Trump’s war on the Constitution: conservative

05 December 2022

Former President Donald Trump was still being bombarded with condemnation for meeting with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago when, on Saturday, December 3, he set off yet another controversy — this time, by calling for the U.S. Constitution to be “terminated” so that he can be reinstalled as president. It didn’t take long for countless Democrats, from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates to Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, long to condemn Trump’s comments. And Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, an arch-conservative Republican, called Trump out as well, tweeting, “No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.”

But many other Republicans have remained silent, obviously afraid to say or do anything that would offend Trump’s MAGA base. That silence, according to Washington Post opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin, is yet another textbook example of the “spinelessness” much of the GOP continues to show where Trump is concerned.

In a December 5 column, the Never Trumper observes, “Defeated former President Donald Trump, within the space of two weeks, sat down to dine with two antisemites — one of whom later declared his love of Hitler — and declared on Truth Social that the U.S. Constitution should be subject to ‘termination’ so he could be installed as president. Rarely has an authoritarian insurrectionist under criminal investigation for attempting to overthrow the government issued so candid a confession.”

Although Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, has restored Trump’s @realdonaldtrump account, the former president is still using his own platform Truth Social as his primary social media outlet. And it was on Truth Social that Trump, on December 3, posted, “So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

The Republican Party, Rubin emphasizes, should totally distance itself from anyone who calls for “termination” of articles in the U.S. Constitution. And the fact that so many Republicans are unwilling to speak out, she laments, underscores the GOP’s dysfunction.

“In a healthy democracy with two sane, stable and pro-democratic parties,” Rubin laments, “it never would have come to this. In such a world, Republicans never would have nominated and elected, in 2016, an openly racist character who fanned birtherism; Republicans never would have renominated him and never would have acquitted him twice in impeachment hearings. Republicans, in our parallel universe, would have disowned him after January 6, 2021 (and) repudiated him when he issued antisemitic insults and continued to lie about 2020. They would have disowned him when he renounced fidelity to the Constitution.”

Rubin adds, “It would hardly come as a surprise that a parade of spineless Republicans appearing on the Sunday shows refused to declare him unfit to be president.”

The columnist argues that Rep. Michael R. Turner of Ohio, a Republican, showed his “moral cowardice” when he said he “vehemently disagreed” with Trump’s call for “termination” the Constitution yet would not “rule out Trump as the nominee” in the 2024 election. And Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, who heads the Republican Governance Group, said he will “support whoever the Republican nominee is” in 2024.

Too many Republicans, Rubin observes, “continue to cower in fear of the radicalized base” that they “helped rile up by standing by the ‘Big Lie’ that the 2020 race was stolen.”

“It should not be too much to ask that serious media outlets label the GOP accurately as a threat to constitutional government and to democracy,” Rubin writes. “At the very least, might mainstream reporters and pundits stop ridiculing President Biden for condemning the ‘semi-fascist’ MAGA movement and repeatedly defending the rule of law?”

Rubin continues, “Neither the press nor the American people can afford to ignore a MAGA GOP that embraces a racist, an antisemite and an enemy of democracy. Trump’s rants are more than just ‘talk’; they’re an invitation to repeat the horrors of January 6.”

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