Rep. Gosar, Wednesday’s insurrection belongs to you
The number of Arizona politicians who insist they had nothing to do with Wednesday’s stunning display of sedition and insurrection at the nation’s Capitol?
Absolutely astounding.
Here is Rep. Paul “who me?” Gosar, who for two months, without so much as a shred of evidence, has been howling at the moon about election fraud. A guy, just before rioters stormed the Capitol, stood on the House floor on Wednesday afternoon and outright lied as he objected to Arizona’s vote, declaring, “Over 400,000 mail-in ballots were altered, switched from President Trump to Vice President Biden or completely erased from President Trump’s total.”
Minutes later, his rhetoric was a bit more muted.
“Ok. I said let’s do an audit. Let’s not get carried away here,” he tweeted. “I don’t want anyone hurt. We are protesting the violation of our laws. We are builders not destroyers. BLM burns and loots. We build. If anyone on the ground reads this and is beyond the line come back.”
Interestly, he posted the same picture on Parler, a social-media site for right wingers, but with a wholly different message appearing to justify the assault: “Americans are upset”.
Here is his fellow “builder” Rep. Andy Biggs, who joined Gosar and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday in asking Congress to disenfranchise Arizona’s voters by rejecting the state’s 11 electoral votes for Joe Biden:
“Peaceful protests are the hallmark of our constitutional republic,” he tweeted, as Trump supporters overran security, bursting through doors, breaking windows and scaling walls to get inside. “Violence should never be tolerated, and I condemn the violence we experienced at the U.S. Capitol today. Those who have violently violated the laws should be prosecuted to the fullest extent.”
Let’s hear from state Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, who actually attempted to justify Wednesday’s assault on the nation’s Capitol.
“What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud. #stopthesteal”
And from state Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, who has been busy trying to substitute the will of the Republican-run Legislature for the will of the people:
“In AZ, we should have three branches of government during a crisis, a full forensic audit of a contested election and the Constitution honored by the Executive,” she tweeted, in response to Gov. Doug Ducey’s denunciation of Wednesday’s insurrection. “When we do not, when people have had enough, you cannot act pious and holier than thou when the people revolt.”
Apparently, you can only act pious
and holier than thou when you help instigate that revolt.
Finally, let’s hear from Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward, the one whose party earlier Wednesday sent out an email saying, “Today, January 6, 2021, is the day that we #StopTheSteal and take back our country from the extreme, radical Democrats (i.e. Socialists) who are seeking to take away our freedom, eliminate our rights, and thwart the will of the American people in the 2020 election.”
Ward, who every hour on the hour for the last two months has cried that the election was “stolen”, never mind that every one of her lawsuits was tossed into the trash by judges:
“I’m not going back to the way things were before President @realDonaldTrump. Are you?”
Not going back to the time before presidents invited, incited and instigated Americans to storm the nation’s Capitol in an effort to derail democracy?
It is time for a reckoning in the Republican Party.
For weeks and months and years now, too many conservative Republicans have stood silently by and allowed the wholesale co-opting of their party by a president who claims to stand for America First but on Wednesday demonstrated once and for all exactly what he stands for.
The late Sen. John McCain tried to warn his fellow Republicans. Former Sen. Jeff Flake tried to warn them.
“We must never regard as ‘normal’ the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals,” Flake said October 2017, in announcing that he would not seek re-election. “We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country – the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.”
Flake didn’t run for re-election because he would never have survived the Republican primary, having stood up to this president.
Well, he’s standing tall today.
The question is, who among our current leaders has the spine to join him? To stand up now for the once-Grand Old Party and stare down the Kelli Wards
and Paul Gosars of the world, the zealots and cultists who have fed lie after lie to their base as they helped Trump light the spark that ignited an assault not seen since 1814, when the British invaded the nation’s Capitol?
Because make no mistake, Gosar, Biggs, Ward and company are all complicit in what happened on Wednesday. As are Townsend and Finchem, who appear to be trading on voter outrage to try to move up the political food chain in 2022. And so many others. (Yeah, Rep. Debbie Lesko, I’m looking at you, too.)
For two months, they’ve been whipping conservative Republicans into a frenzy. Fueled by baseless conspiracy theories and outright fabrication, they cry fraud and demand audits and refuse to accept any result that doesn’t result in a second term for Trump.
Never mind that elections officials from both parties and in all 15 of Arizona’s counties certified the results of the vote after conducting all tests required by state law to ensure the counts were accurate.
Never mind that Ducey, himself a big Trump supporter, certified the results as fair and accurate and declared, “the problems that exist in other states simply don’t apply here”.
Never mind that Trump supporters had their day(s) in court and are now 0-8 in their lawsuits challenging the results of Arizona’s elections.
Now they all condemn Wednesday’s desecration of the Capitol, just not their part in instigating it.
On what should have been a day to celebrate democracy in America, we witnessed a disgraceful attempt to interrupt what has been the hallmark and the strength and the pride of America – the peaceful transition of power, as directed by the people of America.
So no, Rep. Gosar, you don’t get to now say, “it’s beyond the line, come back”. Not when you pushed them and pushed them and pushed them until finally you pushed them too far.