Conservative slams GOP's 'poisonous buffoonery'​ — and makes the devastating case for a second Trump impeachment

With the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden only two weeks away, President Donald Trump and his sycophants are still hoping that he will find a way to remain in office. Conservative journalist Kevin Williamson, in a scathing piece for the National Review, lambasts Trump and other Republicans who are refusing to accept the will of the Electoral College.

Trump, during a January 2 phone conversation, unsuccessfully tried to bully and coerce Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into overturning the presidential election results in the Peach State. The president asked Raffensperger to "find" him enough votes to reverse Biden's Georgia victory, but Raffensperger, a conservative Republican, wouldn't budge and maintained that Biden won Georgia fair and square.

"It is no great surprise to find President Donald Trump and cronies complaining about election fraud even as President Donald Trump and his cronies were recorded in a telephone call attempting to suborn election fraud, threatening the Georgia secretary of state — a Republican, note — with criminal prosecution unless he should 'find,' discovering by some black art, enough votes to swing the state's election Trump's way," Williamson writes. "I have, on many occasions, criticized the abuse of the word coup in our politics, but that is what this is: an attempted coup d'état under color of law. It would be entirely appropriate today to impeach Trump a second time and remove him from office before his term ends."

Williamson goes on to say that politically, there must be negative repercussions for all Republicans who have tried to help Trump overturn democratic election results.

"No one who has participated in this poisonous buffoonery should ever hold office again," Williamson declares. "There was a time when there was a plausible, if sometimes self-serving, rationale for working for the Trump Administration — that the president is a clueless poseur surrounded by crackpots and frauds, and that he desperately needs good counsel from responsible adults. But the Trump Administration is not currently under the guiding influence of any such responsible adults — and there simply is no defending what it is up to. This cannot be excused or explained away."

Williamson, however, not only slams GOP politicians, but also, right-wing media sycophants like Fox News' Sean Hannity.

"Trump's media cheerleaders, who like to call themselves constitutionalists and patriots, are no such thing," Williamson stresses. "They are, for the most part, profiteers who will justify anything if it helps them to hold on to one point of audience share as they peddle their various blends of snake oil. Woe unto them that call evil good and justify the wicked for gain."

The National Review writer adds that many Trump supporters have "mocked" conservative Trump critics like Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona as "gentleman losers" and praised Trump as someone who got results. And such thinking, according to Williamson, is wrong-headed because Trump has inflicted major damage on the conservative movement.

Williamson writes, "(Trump) has dishonored, disfigured and debased everything he has touched. It has been a shameful spectacle…. The Republicans who were all too willing to swap their honor for a little bit of political power have been, like most people who have done business with Donald Trump over the years, ripped off."

The conservative journalist stresses that any party that embraced Trump as president has no business comparing itself to President Abraham Lincoln.

"For my own part, I believe that the Republican Party has been both mutilated and laid bare at the same time," Williamson argues. "It will be a very long time before it can, with a straight face, once again call itself the party of Lincoln, though it may aspire to be that once again. Party of Lincoln? The Republican Party would have to undergo the political equivalent of one of those reality-television makeovers if it wanted to stand so tall as to be the party of Gerald Ford. The modern Republican Party, whatever it was, is gone — even if much of the staff and the incorporation papers remain."