Worse Than Treason

No amount of rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the
Republican Party is advocating for the overthrow of an American election.
5:30 AM ET
Tom Nichols
Author of Our Own Worst Enemy
A hand holding a gavel
Lambert / Getty

�We are what we pretend to be,� Kurt Vonnegut wrote in the opening of his
1962 novel, Mother Night, �and so we must be careful what we pretend to
be.� Republicans in Congress are pretending to be seditionists�and so they
have become, in fact, seditionists.

Forget all the whispered denials and the off-the-record expressions of
concern in private; ignore the knowing smirks on camera from GOP officials
who are desperately trying to indicate that they�re in on the joke. Brush
aside the caviling of the anti-anti-Trump writers who would rather talk
about that time in 2017 when some Democrats objected to the Electoral
College vote (and were gaveled down by Joe Biden himself).

This is sedition, plain and simple. No amount of playacting and
rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican
Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American
election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat.

This is not some handful of firebrands making a stand for the television
cameras. In 2005, one Democrat in the House and one in the Senate filed an
objection to counting Ohio�s electoral votes, while insisting that they
were not contesting the outcome of the presidential election itself. In
2017, a handful of Democratic members of the House objected to the
electoral count. Because they lacked support in the Senate, then�Vice
President Biden ruled the representatives out of order and declared, �It
is over.� In both cases, the Democratic candidate had already conceded.
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Today, the �sedition caucus� includes at least 140 members of the
House�that is, some two-thirds of the House GOP membership�and at least 10
members of the Senate. Their challenge comes after weeks of insistence
that the 2020 election was rigged, plagued by fraud, and even subverted by
foreign powers. The president and his minions have filed, and lost, scores
of lawsuits that ranged from minor disputes over process to childlike,
error-filled briefs full of bizarre assertions.

Instead of threatening to gavel these objections into irrelevance, as
Biden did four years ago, Vice President Mike Pence �welcomes� these
challenges. Pence�s career is finished, but he could have stood for the
Constitution he claims to love and which he swore to defend. However,
cowardice is contagious, and no mask was thick enough to protect Pence
from the pathogen of fear.

Perhaps the sedition caucus didn�t mean to go this far. Its members began
by arguing that we all just needed to humor President Trump, to give him
time to process the loss, and to treat the president of the United States
as a toddler who was going home empty-handed. He wouldn�t be a dead-ender,
they assured us, because that would be too humiliating. The Republican
Party would never immolate itself for a proven loser.

But for Trump, there is no such thing as too much humiliation. The only
shame in Trump world lies in admitting defeat. And so Trump doubled down,
as anyone who had watched him for more than 10 minutes knew he would. And
then he tripled, quadrupled, quintupled down. And just as they have done
for the past four years, elected Republicans tried to convince themselves
that if they supported this outrage, it would be the last time they would
be required to surrender their dignity; that this betrayal of the
Constitution would be the last treachery demanded of them. That if they
complied one more time, they would be allowed to go back to their
privileged lives far from the districts they claim to represent�places few
of them really want to live after tasting life in the Emerald City.

It is possible that the sedition caucus knew that all these challenges
would fail. It is possible that they know their last insult to American
democracy, on Wednesday, will go nowhere, as well. This is irrelevant:
Engaging in sedition for insincere reasons does not make it less hideous.
Arguing that you betrayed the Constitution only as theater is no defense.

Indeed, shredding the Constitution purely for personal gain is perhaps the
worst of the sins of the sedition caucus. It would almost be a relief to
know that these Republicans really believe what they�re trying to sell,
that they are genuine fanatics and ideologues who have at least paid us
the respect of pitting their sincere beliefs against our own.

But we are, in the main, dealing with people who are far worse than true
believers. The Republican Party is infested with craven opportunists, the
kind of people who will try to tell us later that they were �just asking
questions,� that they were �defending the process,� and of course, that
they were merely representing �the will of the people.� Senators Josh
Hawley and Ted Cruz are not idiots. These are men who understand perfectly
well what they are doing. Senator Mitt Romney sees it clearly, noting that
his GOP colleagues are engaged in �an egregious ploy� to �enhance
political ambition.�

People of goodwill across the United States want some sort of road map to
oppose this cold-blooded attack on the Constitution, but none exists. As
James Madison warned us, without a virtuous people, no system of checks
and balances will work. The Republicans have gone from being a party that
touted virtue to being the most squalid and grubby expression of
institutionalized self-interest in the modern history of the American
republic.

The real solution will come after all of these schemes fail. Voters must
not take the bait and try to tinker with hasty legal and constitutional
fixes. These, too, will fail to contain a party that is determined to
destroy legal and moral norms in the pursuit of raw power. The better
course is to turn our attention to the business of governing, while vowing
to drive every member of the sedition caucus out of our public life, both
through the ballot box and by shunning their enablers.

The members of the public and the institutions of American life should
shroud these seditionists in silence and opprobrium in perpetuity: no
television interviews, no sinecures at universities or think tanks, no
rehabilitating book tours, no jokey late-night appearances, no self-
serving op-eds.

The sedition caucus is worse than a treasonous conspiracy. At least real
traitors believe in something. These people instead believe only in their
own fortunes and thus will change flags and loyalties as circumstances
require. They will always become what they pretend to be, and so they
cannot�and must not�be trusted ever again with political power.
Tom Nichols is the author of the forthcoming book Our Own Worst Enemy: The
Assault From Within on Modern Democracy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/what-republicans-are-
doing-worse-treason/617538/