Trial saw profiles in courage, cowardice
GOP heroes evoke Smith who stood up to McCarthy
One Republican woman had the courage to take on a corrosive bully in her own party, a fellow senator who had Washington firmly in his thrall, deftly using lies and intimidation to keep his opponents off balance and his fellow Republicans in check.
She, at least in 1950, was Margaret Chase Smith, the junior senator from Maine. On her way to the Senate floor to say what no one else had been willing to say, she was approached by the bully, who, at least in 1950, was Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
“Margaret, you look very serious,” he told her, according to a recounting by historian Jon Meacham. “Are you going to make a speech?”
“Yes,” she said. “and you will not like it.”
McCarthy growled to Smith, a potential vice-presidential pick, that any path to the White House went through him: “Remember, Margaret, I control Wisconsin’s 27 convention votes.”
“For what?” Smith asked. Then she delivered her “Declaration of Conscience” speech. Backed by six other GOP senators, it condemned attitudes of “know nothing, suspect everything” and McCarthy’s scorched-earth tactics that leveled wild accusations of communism and trampled democratic principles for political advantage.
In that moment, Smith guaranteed her place on the bad side of McCarthy — and on the right side of history.
Seventy years later, most Republican senators sided with the bully, Donald Trump, absolving the former president from his role in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, which left five people dead, dozens injured and threatened democracy itself.
As for this editorial board, we side with the heroes, who, just like in 1950, were led by a courageous Republican woman, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. The third-ranking House Republican stared down censure, calls to resign and promises of a primary challenge when she backed Trump’s impeachment and called his siccing of a violent mob on Congress exactly what it was: an unprecedented betrayal of his office and of the Constitution.
We also applaud her GOP colleague, U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state, who bravely came forward in the eleventh hour of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial with a damning recounting of a conversation she said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Trump loyalist, told her he had with Trump in which the president sided with the mob over those trying to stop it.
We salute the seven Republican senators, some of whom are facing harsh backlash for choosing the right thing over the easy thing. They joined the majority of U.S. senators and voted to convict Trump of inciting insurrection. Together with steadfast Democrats, who presented a compelling case, they made it the most bipartisan vote ever in favor of convicting a president in a Senate impeachment trial. In their own words:
“I cannot allow the significance of my vote to be devalued by whether or not I feel that this is helpful for my political ambitions,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
“The president promoted unfounded conspiracy theories to cast doubt on the integrity of a free and fair election because he did not like the results,” said Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina.
“President Trump attempted to corrupt the election by pressuring the secretary of state of Georgia to falsify the election results in his state,” said Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah.
“He publicly and falsely declared that Vice President Pence could break his constitutional oath and simply declare a different outcome,” said Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska.
“When these efforts failed, President Trump summoned thousands to Washington, D.C., and inflamed their passions,” said Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
“Instead of preventing a dangerous situation, President Trump created one,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. “And rather than defend the constitutional transfer of power, he incited an insurrection with the purpose of preventing that transfer of power from occurring.”
“I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
Because conviction required two-thirds of the chamber to agree, these brave senators were on the losing side — but then, so was the truth.
Their colleagues who voted to acquit either averted their eyes from the glaring evidence or cowered behind strained legal arguments. History will judge them, but the American people need not wait. We bore witness to the assault on our nation’s Capitol and the evidence presented in trial.
We will not forget Trump’s crimes or the failure of most in his party to hold him accountable. Senators failed to show the same kind of courage that Republican state officials did as they resisted the former president’s pressure to overturn an election.
They failed to put their duty to safeguard democracy above partisan allegiance. They took no strength from former Vice President Mike Pence, who rebuffed calls to interfere in the Electoral College certification process, or from former Attorney General Bill Barr, who investigated allegations of voter fraud and, finding no evidence, chose to resign rather than perpetuate Trump’s false claims.
They failed to honor the bravery of the officers who risked their lives to prevent further carnage, including Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick, who was killed, and the almost 140 officers who were bruised, bloodied and bashed by a mob wielding bats and flag poles.
Perhaps the starkest profile in cowardice belongs to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for voting to acquit and then delivering a damning speech proving he knew better. McConnell declared Trump “practically and morally” responsible for the Capitol riot but relied on a questionable legal interpretation to claim the Senate lacked the power to hold a former president accountable. Then he tried to pass blame on the House for delays when he himself blocked the Senate from starting the trial while Trump was still in office.
Such excuses, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s claim that Democrats were being “unnnecessarily vindictive” in pursuing impeachment, aren’t fooling anybody who’s been paying attention.
Their real motivation for acquittal is fear. Fear of losing political power, of facing a primary challenger backed by the partisan faithful, who at this moment overwhelmingly support Trump. A recent poll found that 7 in 10 Republicans do not consider a vote to impeach principled, but disloyal.
That could be because they still believe Trump’s lies. And that could be because their Republican representatives in Washington have been afraid to set them straight.
What an awakening Senate Republicans could have engendered for their constituents still under Trump’s spell if they had at last vouched for the truth and voted to convict.
Instead, they vouched once again for the lies of a reality TV star who proved a master of delusion.
It took almost four years from when Margaret Chase Smith spoke up against McCarthy for popular opinion to turn against him, but turn it did. What is right bears out. What is wrong is found out.
Republican senators who cast conscience aside may try to forget the violence, the destruction, the distrust Trump incited, but history will remember — and so will the American people.
As Smith said in her Declaration of Conscience, “I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.”
Surely.