Hahahahaha!

<....Thankfully, Mike Pence did not want to get involved in that sort of illegality....>

One person amidst all the chaos of the last administration who managed to uphold the law.

<....I don't like his politics, but at least he stood for the constitution when push came to shove.>

<How do Republicans move forward after Trump? Ditch magical thinking and tell the truth. Scott Jennings, Opinion contributor 1/23/2021

How do Republicans move forward after Trump? Ditch magical thinking and tell the truth.

On the one hand, you could judge American democracy to be quite healthy. In November, we had our highest election turnout in over a century. An engaged citizenry, after all, is vital to our system of government. Joe Biden received the most votes of any candidate in U.S. history, and Donald Trump the second most.

On the other hand, you can feel that something is not quite right. Since the insurrection of Jan. 6, I am catching up to the vast number of people taken in by outrageous conspiracy theories and by Trump’s lie that the election was stolen. A Quinnipiac survey found 31% of Americans — including 67% of Republicans and 32% of independents — believe Biden’s win to be illegitimate.

In one way, this is the continuation of a trend that began in 2000, when a great many Democrats refused to accept the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s presidency. Liberal intransigence continued into 2004 and then reared up again in 2016 after Trump was elected.

And yet this time is different. The people who think Biden is illegitimate took those views to the next anti-democratic level (egged on by Trump himself) by attacking the U.S. Capitol to try to subvert the Congress from performing its constitutional duties. The mob wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence and apparently intimidate and assault (or worse) members of Congress to force them to change the results of the Electoral College.

This escalation represents a serious threat to our democracy, as millions of Americans have concluded that the only legitimate elections are ones in which their preferred candidate prevails. This is an extremely corrosive — and unpatriotic — viewpoint.

“If (Joe Biden) becomes our illegitimate president, we’re done. None of us will be voting again,” Kentuckian John Isaacs told The Courier Journal last weekend. Isaacs had traveled to Washington on Jan. 6 to be part of the “Stop the Steal” rally that led to the capitol violence. He told the newspaper that it was “mathematically impossible” for Biden to have won.

Jason Sattler: To save America, destroy the Republican Party of Trump, insurrection and conspiracy nuts

With all due respect, this is ridiculous. No American should be so wrapped up in a single politician that they declare they will never vote again because that person lost. Republican leaders have a responsibility to tell Mr. Isaacs and those who agree with him the truth: The election was won by Biden, fair and square. And they should take stock of who has lied to them during the same period.

The high probability of a Trump loss was eminently predictable, even before the pandemic struck last year. In two elections he received a smaller percentage of the vote than Mitt Romney did in 2012. Trump’s party was wiped out in the 2018 midterm and then lost the Senate due to his Georgia sabotage. Trump had a rather low political ceiling to begin with, and it fell dramatically after the events of Jan. 6.

But Republicans have been stricken with a terminal case of magical thinking since 2016, when Trump, against all odds, predictions and polls won the presidency. Among many Republicans there was a feeling that, no matter how bad the polling or the president’s personal performance (did you watch the first debate?), it would all just somehow work for him.

It turns out magical thinking isn’t a good political strategy. Trump tried hard for about two weeks of his reelection campaign in late October and made it closer than many polls predicted, but it just wasn’t enough.

And that’s OK, because we are holding another election in two years, and another one two years after that. This is how we do it. Conservatives can rejoice in some of what Trump did (lower taxes, scores of conservative judges, Middle East peace agreements, etc.) even as we lament his post-election disgrace and chart a path back to national viability.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: How do Republicans move forward after Trump? Ditch magical thinking and tell the truth.>

<....The new president deserves the loyalty of Republicans and fellow Americans who believe in the Constitution. This doesn’t mean changing our views or values, or even thinking that a single Biden policy is good for the country. (His early moves trouble me greatly, as I fear he cannot say no to the fringe left radicals in his party.)

But it does mean respecting our system, which produced a legitimate result and, therefore, a legitimate president. It means renouncing violence as a replacement for normal democratic engagement. And it means preparing to take your arguments to the American people in the next election instead of taking your vote and going home, or worse.

Mitch McConnell on Capitol riot: Mob was 'provoked' by Donald Trump

Most Republicans supported President Trump even though he wasn’t their first choice in the 2016 primary. They stuck with him through numerous self-defeating and outrageous episodes because they respected the election results even when Democrats did not. Republicans hoped he could win a second term and continue to deliver center-right policy victories.

But most Republicans did not sign up for the shocking level of pouting, lying and unconstitutional actions Trump delivered on his way out. I personally wasn’t creative enough to conjure a scenario in which the president of the United States would whip up a violent mob to threaten his own loyal vice president in a bid to overturn the election results.

Watching Biden take the oath of office Wednesday was a pleasant reminder that our system held, despite the recent assault upon it. And for Republicans, it was a rather unpleasant reminder of what happens when you descend into the magical thinking that losing an election is “mathematically impossible.”

The best path forward for conservatives? Unify and rejoice around a system that lets us choose our leaders. Work with President Biden to deliver the coronavirus vaccine while opposing the worst impulses of the left. Focus on our conservative ideas instead of unpredictable personalities.

And, most of all, tell the truth — to ourselves, and to the American people.>

No exceptions. No excuses. Send them to prison.>

<After acquitting Trump, McConnell slams him for a 'disgraceful dereliction of… Tim Miller: I'm disgusted by Mitch McConnell's behavior The LA Times logoEditorial: Trump's acquittal is no vindication — and his enablers should be shamed and shunned

The Senate’s failure to convict former President Trump for inciting a deadly insurrection is a miscarriage of justice. By any standard, managers from the House of Representatives established that Trump bears responsibility for the violent assault on the Capitol by crazed supporters eager to stop Congress from ratifying Joe Biden’s victory in a free and fair election.

a group of people in a living room: In this image from video, Bruce Castor, an attorney for former President Donald Trump, speaks. (Associated Press)© (Associated Press) In this image from video, Bruce Castor, an attorney for former President Donald Trump, speaks. (Associated Press) The 43 Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump — some of them hiding behind specious constitutional objections and ignoring the precedents for convicting a former officeholder — have shamed themselves rather than offend Trump’s base. The Constitution rightly requires a supermajority for conviction in an impeachment trial; but the overwhelming case against Trump should have easily produced that margin.

Yet the trial was not in vain. Seven Republican senators did their duty and voted to convict, as did all 50 senators in the Democratic caucus, making it impossible for Trump and his apologists to claim that this impeachment was a purely partisan exercise. The trial’s greatest value, however, was in establishing for a national television audience just how great a threat Trump posed to American democracy — and might pose again.

Had the Senate convicted Trump, it could have proceeded to disqualify him, under the Constitution, from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.” Ideally the powerful case mounted by the House will persuade voters and the Republican Party to bring about the same result.

The managers proved in devastating detail that Trump incited the Jan. 6 riot, not only in his inflammatory speech that day, but also in his long and duplicitous campaign to discredit the election and cling to power. They established that rioters thought they were acting at Trump’s direction. They showed that Trump behaved as recklessly after the assault on the Capitol as he did before his supporters followed his exhortation to “stop the steal.”

Finally, they made it clear that winking at and encouraging violence is a pattern for Trump, one that preceded his attempt to overturn the election results. As Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said: “Jan. 6 was not some unexpected radical break from his normal law-abiding and peaceful disposition. This was his essential M.O. He knew that, egged on by his tweets, his lies and his promise of a ‘wild’ time in Washington to guarantee his grip on power, his most extreme followers would show up bright and early, ready to attack, ready to engage in violence, ready to ‘fight like hell’ for their hero.”...>

<....In their defense, Trump's lawyers offered a grab bag of unconvincing arguments. They engaged in whataboutism (for example, by noting how Democrats have used the word “fight” when talking about their candidacies or their policies); made specious appeals to the 1st Amendment to excuse Trump's fomenting; portrayed the impeachment as an attempt to disenfranchise Trump's supporters; and suggested that in impeaching Trump the House was motivated by hatred for the former president rather than revulsion at the violence he incited and a determination to punish him for it.

Trump's lawyers seized on a throwaway line in Trump’s speech about peaceful protest to transmute the incendiary demand to “stop the steal” at the Capitol into an appeal for ordinary political action. And they suggested, fallaciously, that the fact that some of the rioters may have planned violence before Trump’s speech — or showed up at the Capitol before the speech — meant that Trump couldn’t have incited others to storm the Capitol.

Fair-minded Americans — including many Trump voters — should come away from this revealing trial resolved never to allow Donald J. Trump to be treated as a legitimate participant in American political life, let alone be returned to the White House.

Sadly, given the polarization that Trump both promoted and profited from — and a stark divide in the media landscape — many of the former president’s most fervent followers will see his acquittal as vindication of a president who was subjected by the House to “constitutional cancel culture.”

Nor is it clear that the Republican Party is ready to relinquish its connection with Trump. Consider the way some state party organizations have reacted to members of Congress who voted their conscience in the impeachment process.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the third-most senior Republican in the House, was censured by the Wyoming Republican Party for voting to impeach Trump; the state party also called on her to resign. After Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) voted that it was constitutional for the impeachment trial to proceed, the Republican Party of Louisiana issued a statement expressing profound disappointment and adding that “former President Trump is innocent of the politically motivated, bogus charges now pending against him in a kangaroo court presided over by an openly hostile political opponent.”

A president who has been twice impeached and who manipulated supporters into believing his election-fraud fantasy — ultimately delivering a harangue that sent some of them to invade the Capitol — should be shunned and shamed despite this acquittal. Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump because of a supposed constitutional objection should be in the forefront of the effort to ostracize him from their party.

It put the corruption and moral depravity of the 45th President of the US back into the limelight. It tied all those GOP senators to the dead orange hooker, and increased the rift within the GOP. Will help to oust Johnson? Who knows. The memory of the average voter is rather short. But the attack ads almost produce themselves.

The Democrat not going with witnesses was half-arsed, pathetic and feckless after the vote. That afore mentioned Ron Johnson screamed at Romney, what on earth Mitten was thinking by voting to allow witnesses, well, that allow should have been a giveaway to call witnesses. It in all likelihood wouldn't have been enough to find those missing ten GOP votes, but it might have made those GOP senators look even worse.

Senator Ron-anon Johnson trying to downplay the capitol riots?!

He has to be the most imbecilic politician alive.

Seven people died because of the events of that day.

How he can manage to get oxygen to his methane-addled brain in trying to downplay that tragedy...wow, you have to wonder about his state of mind.

Yes, Johnson is serving his second term as US Senator. He won re-election in a Presidential election year, in a state the Republicans won. And yes, he has always been awful.

Y'all mean 'They'll have to carry me out of here in a pine box' whilst coaching at Ole Miss, then bolting for Auburn a whole week after proclaiming his undying devotion?