A party that censures most principled has lost its way

“The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values.”

So began the almost laughably hypocritical resolution with which the Republican National Committee on Friday censured Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. — who are among the all-too-few elected officials in their party standing up for the Constitution against a former president who was willing to overturn the result of a legitimate election and who continues to hold the party in his grip.

Even more shockingly, the RNC declared that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that then-President Donald Trump unleashed was merely a situation in which “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

The party’s supposed “values” are spelled out a bit later in the resolution: “Winning back the majority in Congress, including the United States House of Representatives, in 2022 must be the primary goal of the House Republican Conference . . . and requires all Republicans working together to accomplish the same.”

Well, at least that part of the resolution was clear. The only thing Republicans believe they should care about is regaining power. Which is perhaps the best argument for why they shouldn’t.

The heresy committed by Cheney and Kinzinger, in the eyes of their party, is their effort to get to the bottom of what happened leading up to and on the day Trump supporters attempted to stage a coup at the Capitol. The two lawmakers have joined the select House committee investigating the insurrection.

What doesn’t seem to bother the selfproclaimed “party of the Constitution” is the mounting evidence of how far Trump was willing to go to subvert the clear will of the American people as they expressed it at the ballot box in November 2020. How he entertained a proposal to have the Department of Homeland Security seize voting machines in swing states that he lost. How he continues to foment the lie that the election was tainted by massive voter fraud. How he claims that then-Vice President Mike Pence could and should have rejected the electoral college vote tally. How he says he will consider pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters if he gets back into the Oval Office.

In a speech Friday to the Federalist Society near Orlando, Pence said Trump was “wrong ” to assert that the vice president had the legal authority to declare Trump the winner when electoral college votes were counted on Jan. 6.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who was the GOP’s presidential standard-bearer in 2012, had the most apt description of how far Republicans have strayed from their principles. “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol,” he wrote on Twitter. “Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.”

In the imaginations of those who animate the Republican base, the Constitution is written in erasable ink, and filled with fanciful language to suit the passions of the moment. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., has argued, for instance, that “you actually have a constitutionally protected right to free, unrestricted travel within the United States,” which would prevent airlines from requiring passengers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The Constitution, of course, contains no such right.

Cawthorn is finding himself in an uncomfortable spot with regard to language that is contained in the 14th Amendment, which states that no one can serve in Congress “who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” Democrats in his home state have gone to the North Carolina State Board of Elections seeking to bar him from running for re-election, noting that he spoke at a pro-Trump rally that took place right before Trump supporters went to Capitol Hill.

But Cawthorn and his ilk are not outliers. With the RNC’s resolution censuring Cheney and Kinzinger, and its embrace of the rioters who ransacked the halls of Congress at Trump’s behest, the party has now formally cast its lot with those in its ranks who can no longer be dismissed as fringe actors. There might be a way back for Republicans — to conservative principles, and to sanity — but having wandered this far, it is increasingly hard to find it.