Power Trumps Ethics

Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, pleaded with Trump to call off the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol, and Trump essentially refused. Yet McCarthy opposed impeachment, as did most Republicans in the House of Representatives. All but ten House Republicans voted against impeachment despite the fact that mob that invaded the Capitol threatened their lives, and family members have condemned one of the Republican Representatives who voted to impeach Trump.

Mitch McConnell votes to acquit Trump…and then gives a speech blaming Trump for the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Seven Republican Senators voted to convict him, and it appears that all seven have either faced or will face Republican Party censure or disfavor in their home states. Yet, from what I can determine, very few, if any, Republican Senators think Trump is actually innocent of inciting the attack.

Instead, their various rationales for not voting to convict him included: (1) it’s unconstitutional to try a President who’s left office [which is patently and legally false]; (2) it’s better for the country not to convict him [better for the senators in question, certainly]; or (3) it was deplorable but doesn’t fit the legal definition for incitement [which isn’t necessary in an impeachment trial].

Various polls show that, while the majority of Americans think Trump was guilty of inciting the attack on the Capitol, something like 70% of Republicans opposed the action to convict Trump.

Yes, Republicans, the so-called former champions of law and order, and they don’t want their boy convicted. They’re happy with troublesome non-violent civil rights activists being thrown in jail, especially if they’re minorities, or even women protesting for equal rights with men, but not our white, blond, blue-eyed former president who turned a mob on his own Vice-President for daring to uphold the Constitution.

Is it any wonder that Republican members of the House and Senate are reluctant to act ethically? Why, if they voted ethically, they might lose their seats to an even more far-right extremist in the next Republican primary.

And all that goes to show that grass-roots Republicans are so angry and so tribal that they don’t care about law or the Constitution, especially if either gets in the way of what they want.

The problem is that what they’re angry about are fundamental principles on which the nation was based, if imperfectly. They’re opposed to equal voting rights, or why would they do their best to restrict voting in ways that disadvantage the poor and minorities disproportionately?

They keep trying to enact religious dogma into law, despite the design of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers to separate church and state.

Yet they insist they’re the ones who who support the Constitution.

3 thoughts on “Power Trumps Ethics”

  1. Christopher Robin says:

    Instead of changing and growing as a political party they work to rig the gears of the system in their favor, regardless of the disenfranchisement they work to accomplish. This is a sign of a dying party, yet change seems to be the one thing they won’t do.

  2. Tom says:

    Perhaps: but I do not think that the Republican Party is dying. There are probably more true conservatives in the Republican fold than there are kleptocratic anarchists. So like Ross Perot and Barry Goldwater I expect Trump to disappear. The concern is the Tea Party which is now Women for America First: but maybe the Republican Party can fool the voters by changing its name to ‘The Party for America’? After all businesses are in the habit of doing such to fool their customers.

    Anyway, it is already apparent that the Democrats are busy fragmenting because of their division by the Progressives (Trotskyists at best). So the voters will react like the Lemmings they are.

    It appears that “Power Trumps Ethics” is alive and well in the UK Conservatives, as well as Poland’s “Law and Justice”: Hungary’s “Hungarian Civic Alliance”: and elsewhere in the western world.

    The ‘Caucasians/whites’ would be better off building an infrastructure where a human ‘landslide’ cannot wipe them out; rather than trying to prevent the inevitable through building a ‘wall’.

    1. Tom says:

      When I am wrong I am really wrong! Yep “Power Trumps Ethics”.

      Moscow Mich had a chance at the second Impeachment Trial, and blew it.

      Almost half of Republicans would join Trump party: poll
      BY DOMINICK MASTRANGELO – 02/21/21 12:47 PM EST TheHill

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