Sedition Road

On November 5, with the Biden campaign team and prominent national Democrats expressing confidence Trump was on his way out, the President began to rail at full volume things were “rigged” against him. With the writing on the wall Trump would surprise nobody and effortlessly morph into the ugliest loser in US history. But Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona had his back, tweeting that Trump was “…the winner of the 2020 election.” Gosar went on and entreated MAGA fellow travelers to “…not let the leftists cheat, lie and steal this from us. We saw the Election Day numbers.“

Of course, it was no shock to get matching rhetoric from Gosar, a frontrunner in any race for the most unhinged member of Congress. But, not even 36 hours after the last polls closed, he was far more rule than outlier, in both tone and substance. In fact, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California was barely an octave or two softer in what he was putting out about the election that very same day. Appearing on Laura Ingraham’s Fox show that evening, McCarthy was in lockstep with the most militant elements of his caucus:

“President Trump won this election so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. Do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes. We need to unite together. You don’t need to be a Republican. If you believe in every legal vote needs to count, you believe in the American process, join together and let’s stop this.”

So, while the votes were still being counted, there was near zero daylight between the messaging of Gosar, a zealot nutty enough to be disowned by his siblings, and the House Minority Leader. Moreover, near everyone in between echoed the same sentiments. That 140 plus House Republicans would enthusiastically object to certifying the election two months later seemed shocking unless one made the effort to track the public record of each between Election Day and 1/6.

Without exception, from November 4th until January 6th, the vast majority of the House GOP cultivated the brazen lie of a stolen election. Moreover, it was not something that evolved or synthesized as information came to light or accusations were lodged; it was nothing other than the full amplification of what Trump promised he would do if he lost, once that scenario started to become reality. Anyone who doubts that now need only study Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s just-released near 2000-page Social Media Report, which exhaustively chronicles the seditionists’ falsehoods in their own words, their own social media postings.

Central to the entire narrative was playing dumb about the different timetables established by each state for counting mail-in votes. Virtually every House Republican whined from the outset about why various states (read those crucial battlegrounds where Biden was beginning to bite into Trump’s vote lead) took longer than others to tabulate their votes.

There was no mystery to the answer… some states permitted counting of mail-in ballots before November 3, others didn’t. Near zero of the GOP inciters acknowledged this simple fact, instead equating delay with “increasing concerns about the process.” The “red mirage” that had been predicted for weeks played out accordingly. Trump started on top as the votes of his partisans, who he commanded not to vote by mail, were tabulated election night, but gradually gave way when historic numbers of mail-in ballots, as fully expected, favored Biden by lopsided margins.

Rep. Robert Aderholdt, a Trumpie from Alabama, was typical of GOP House members from coast to coast, complaining on Facebook November 5 about the “slowness” of the count, which “seems centered in Democratic leaning counties” and “leads to questions in people’s minds that undermines our democratic process.” While Republican Senators merely extolled Trump’s “right” to challenge anything and everything he could think of in court, most of the GOP House Caucus declared things rotten from the start, following Trump and McCarthy’s fact-free pronouncements.

The messaging was the same up and down the line, from rank and file to top leadership, from back benchers like Louie Goumert of Texas, who on November 6th was declaring “the election is in the process of being stolen,” to Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana’s disengenuous 11/6 Tweet that “every American should demand” the election security he was falsely implying they weren’t getting if Trump lost. Lofgren’s stunning report catalogs a detailed chronology of uniform sedition undertaken by near every member of the House GOP. The tone and content dutifully mirror Trump’s incitement right up to 1/6. In retrospect the only term that fits is organized conspiracy.

As 1/6 approached, urgency morphed into a sense of reckless desperation that it was “now or never.” Combative imagery began to thread through posts, with 1/6 characterized as a reckoning for the nation’s survival. Throughout America Trump supporters were being beseeched by their Congressmen and women to resist, as Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania put it on January 5th, the “unconstitutional no excuse mail-in ballot scheme.” Most striking is the uniformity of the language leading up to what House GOP baiters warned was a showdown to rescue all America holds dear. To be clear, this was not abiding sedition, it was collectively demanding it.

With all legitimate challenges exhausted and dispatched with prejudice by one court after another, the common word became “instinctively.” Jim Jordan of Ohio was one of many declaring his objections to certification were justified on the basis “Americans instinctively know that there was something wrong with this election.” Two months of frivolous claims ended exactly where it all began, nothing other than Trump’s campaign guff that defeat was only possible if “they” cheated. Hardly anything more was cited by most of the House GOP to justify thwarting certification. Some used saucier adjectives than others, but all feverishly pursued the same common goal from the moment it became clear Trump’s re-election prospects were in trouble: destroy the faith of their constituents in the electoral process, convince them without evidence things were “rigged” against them.

That the mob they incited for two months actually followed through and rioted as directed seems almost inevitable when one grasps just how cohesive the effort was. Even less surprising is the same degree of homogeneity in the post-insurrectionist talk track, first seeking to absolve Trump of responsibility and then relentlessly creating false equivalence with the unrest following George Floyd’s murder.

The newest phase is to sweep entirely what motivated insurrection under the rug, instead focusing solely on the logistical and operational breakdowns that enabled the security breach, all the while tossing out fictions about Antifa et al highjacking the otherwise patriotic MAGA bystanders on 1/6 to see what sticks. Fox/AM will surely do its part to buttress such falsehoods. At the end of the day the cabal’s members will return to their districts and condemn “all violence” with a wink and nudge. Then each will brag about how they “stood with President Trump” start to finish, and that “election integrity” will always be at the top of their priority list. Few will ever recognize in public Joe Biden as a legitimately elected POTUS.

Just before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s old political rival Stephan Douglas asserted that all citizens “must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots — or traitors.” Our electoral system and the peaceful transfer of political power it facilitates is synonymous with who we are as a nation. Faith in its fairness and legitimacy is the aorta of our civic lifeblood. If creating and relentlessly selling a lie that US elections are corrupt (except for the part that elected you) for no other purpose than to stymie defeat isn’t traitorous sedition, the concept itself is worthless and void of meaning. Lofgren’s report supports only one conclusion: the House GOP is a caucus of traitors. Chew on that next time Chuck Todd or Amy Walter cheerily discuss the prospects of a 2022 Republican majority.