Friday, July 14, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Slowly but steadily, the willful self-extermination of the Republican Party is proceeding apace — as most of the famous names of the no-longer-Grand Old Party are still afraid to tell their true believers the truth about their last president’s 2020 election lies.
Smiling silently in their parlors, many Democrats are deceiving themselves into thinking this is good news for their party — so it must be good news for their country. It is not.
So today, we are going to propose something that will definitely help those rope-a-doping remnants of Republican leadership rediscover their fountain of fortitude.
Why? Because it may be the only way we can douse the flames of the hate politics that now imperil our two-party system.
Why now? Because, as we watched last week’s political TV news bytes from an old-fashioned Republican meet-and-greet at the Sioux City, Iowa, Pizza Ranch, it suddenly seemed clear that we may be silently witnessing the run-up to a pivotal election that could redirect the fate of America’s suddenly fragile democracy.
The daily campaign trail travails of Mike Pence were on display. This time, it came when a calm but firm woman in a gray shirt waited her turn and then pointed her finger at the former vice president and respectfully blasted him for his Jan. 6 heroics: “If it wasn’t for your vote, we would not have Joe Biden in the White House. That was the constitutional right you had to send those votes back to the states.”
Pence launched into his practiced response: “The Constitution affords no authority to the vice president or anyone else to reject votes or return votes to the states. I’m sorry, ma’am, but that’s never been done before, should never be done in the future. ... That’s actually what the Constitution says. President Trump was wrong about my authority that day. And he’s still wrong.”
On MSNBC, journalist Jonathan Lemire cut in to accurately report: “Pence was correct there.” But we know Trump’s true believers won’t be taking their truth cues from us.
And a day later, we saw that the Iowa woman in the gray shirt, Luann Bertrand, wasn’t taking her cues about the U.S. Constitution from Pence either. “I believe he is a good man,” she later told a TV reporter. “I love that he is strengthened by his faith. But I really feel like he altered history. … He has that one hiccup.”
We were not just discovering yet another Iowa Republican who remains a faith-based true believer of Trump’s 2020 election big lie. We were also realizing that we could soon be just one more Democratic election muck-up from plunging our democracy into what could end up as an era of American presidential autocracy.
Pence keeps trying to please all of his diverging Republican audiences. But it’s not working for him. And it never will. Nor will it work for the self-shattering Republican Party. Not until all the GOP’s leaders quit trying to double-speak their way out of the mess their old leader marched them into.
Trump has seen his support grow since he was indicted and arrested. He now has about half the Republican voters, according to polls that are way too early to be trusted. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is already un-impressing and slipping. Pence and the pack are in single digits.
It is way past time for all Republican leaders who still put patriotism and the Constitution first to unite in a new and different crusade: The Republican Famous Names should form a Truth Squad — so they can finally tell the truth and rescue their party from its life as the embodiment of the Trumped-up big lie.
This Republican Truth Squad needs to include not just some, but all of the most prominent Senate Republicans’ famous names. Especially Iowa’s Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst — they’re long missing in action. (Maybe their courage will inspire House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to reinsert the steel that’s missing from his spine.)
Let small delegations of Republican Truth Squad members begin spreading the 2020 Truth to Trump’s Make America Great Again believers in each 2024 primary and caucus state. And let them start yesterday. Each Republican who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 knows the truth about that day — and the peril that the politics of hate it perpetuated will inflict upon the future of our suddenly shaky democracy.
Let America’s Republican leaders rise above themselves. By leading at last, they may be their OP’s best and last hope for finally putting their missing “G” back where it needs to be.
Martin Schram is a columnist for Tribune News Service.
