OP-Ed: The Unanswered Question: Will Congress Do What It Should Do And Remove Members Who Supported The Insurrection.
(Author’s Note: This is the 16th in a series of occasional political columns that I’ll be writing for CommPRO.biz until Inauguration Day, January 20. Previously, I wrote 17 political columns leading up to Election Day. FYI: My first public relations job was with a political firm, where I worked on local, statewide and presidential campaigns. In this column I opine that the members of Congress who sided with President Trump in his quest to overturn a free election must be punished.)
Arthur Solomon
If you or I would continually publicly disparage the firm we worked at, we certainly would be shown the door.
If you or I would incite other workers to show our displeasure by trashing, injuring, threatening to or killing top management at the company we worked at, we certainly would be arrested.
And that would be justified. But some workers could do such things and escape being arrested or fired. And that's wrong. The same penalties should apply to everyone, regardless of our place in society. But it doesn’t. Some workers are exempt from the rules that apply to you and I.
And they are the members of Congress, who for the last four years have helped spread the lies of a president incapable of telling the truth, and certainly share along with President Trump blame for the insurrection that led to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, resulting in the death of law enforcement personnel and others.
Even after the ransacking of the Capitol, the majority of Republican members of the House of Representatives still refused to condemn the presidents attempted coup. But they still have their jobs. In effect, they are a visible fifth-column in Congress. The unanswered question is will the House take any corrective action against these instigators.
Even before the House completed its bipartisan vote asking Vice President Mike Pence to use the 25th Amendment, which would curb President Trump’s powers, Pence sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on January 12, saying that he would not do so, assuring that the impeachment process would go forward after Democrats introduced one article of impeachment against Trump for “incitement of insurrection” on the previous day.
As I write this on January 13, the House has just voted to impeach the president, marking Trump as the first president to be impeached twice. Importantly, unlike the first time he was impeached in 2019, when the entire GOP caucus voted against impeachment, a number of Republicans voted to impeach the president. And the likelihood is that so will some GOP senators if it reaches the trial stage. Sen. Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator to back one of the two impeachment resolutions when they reached the Senate in 2020.
There are too many GOP House members to point a finger at, so I’ll just limit it to three -- Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader of California, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona.
McCarthy has been a staunch supporter of Trump’s delusions that the election was stolen from him. He led 126 Republican members of Congress to join the law suit of the Texas attorney general to overturn the election results, the 139 who voted to overturn the Electoral College votes and even after the Electoral College voted in favor of President-elect Biden refused to accept the decision. Rep. Brooks egged on the mob that stormed the Capitol by saying, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”Will you fight for America?” Rep. Gosar said that Trump was the victim of a coup, writing that Americans should “Be ready to defend the Constitution and the White House.”
Senators who led the stirring of the pot during the Electoral College voting, in their quest to achieve the Republican nomination for president in 2024, are Ted Cruz of Texas and Joshua Hawley of Missouri, both of whom will be remembered in history as traitors to the cherished traditions of U.S. democracy for leading GOP senators to subvert the election of President-elect Joe Biden. Following these traitors of democracy were Sens. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Rick Scott of Florida, Roger Marshall of Kansas, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, and Cynthia Lummis, of Wyoming.
The question about what punishment the Senate should take against these deniers of a free election is still unanswered.
Waiting until they are up for re-election and letting the voters decide is the coward’s way out. Members of the House and Senate who stood side by side with an autocratic, deranged president to over throw the votes of the American public should be dealt with immediately. They do not deserve to help govern our country.
The reason Sen. Susan Collins gave when she voted against impeaching Trump the first time in February 2020 was because he learned a pretty big lesson, she said. The other day Sen. Roy Blunt said that he is against impeaching Trump because Trump has actually learned his lesson this time.
In a book 1651 book titled “The Court and Character of King James” by Anthony Weldon, there is an Italian proverb saying, “He that deceives me once, its his fault; but if twice, its my fault.” Today that proverb is known as “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” Obviously Sen. Blunt doesn’t believe in proverbs.
The U.S. does not deserve to be fooled even once. That’s why President Trump deserved to be impeached for a second time, and prosecuted after he leaves office.
If there is such a place as Political Hell, Trump deserves to spend eternity in it because of the damage he has done to the United States.
About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr (at) juno.com or artsolomon4pr@optimum.net.
