Will State GOP Wake Up To Reality?
Grothman, Tiffany ignore Jan. 6 hearings, threats to Pence as candidates for governor embrace Trump.
U.S. Reps. Glenn Grothman and Tom Tiffany.
Congressional hearings on the Trump-orchestrated Jan. 6 assault on the American presidential election process have been so embarrassing for Republicans that they have gone into what amounts to denial.
The video footage and quotes from people directly engaged in the “carnage” have proved so damning that Wisconsin Republicans have gone lame in their responses.
Essentially, a good chunk of the Republican Party is trying to blow off the hearings in the House. It’s not going to work.
Pence happens to be a fellow Republican who we now know was the hero of the day by taking over leadership of the grim riot situation. President Donald Trump went silent for three hours as the criminal insurgency stormed the halls of Congress.
Pence, not Trump, called in the National Guard, which finally quelled the rebellion. The vice president also refused to be bullied by Trump’s pressure to suborn the electoral college certification process.
Each additional hearing will pound wooden stakes into the won’t-die-vampire-like conspiracies that support the losing argument that the election was fraudulent. Testimony from Trump’s own appointees and campaign managers proved President Trump knew that his “stolen election” fiction was not anywhere near reality.
Former Attorney General William P. Barr questioned Trump’s grip on reality during Monday’s hearings. Barr said, after losing the election in 2020, President Trump appeared “detached from reality” and obsessed with fantastical notions of voter fraud. Barr called the “Big Lie” about the stolen election “bullshit.”
Going sidewise for a paragraph, as a businessman, one of your first jobs is to deal with reality. You have to listen to what the gods of the marketplace are telling you. If you don’t deal foursquare with reality, your company is headed for tough times.
Similarly, GOP leaders should be figuring out how to get off the unreal sinking ship. Trump is not the Grand Old Party that was long on principle, such as individual responsibility, strong defense, financial restraint via balanced budgets, reasonable taxes and a pro-growth agenda.
The hearings have proved that it’s time for Trump to just go away. Disappearing might save him from jail time. He allegedly pulled in $250 million dollars in donations for his “Official Election Defense Fund.” He has every monetary motive to keep pedaling his B.S.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D. California) put it best when she said the Big Lie is not just a fabrication, it’s a Big “Rip-Off.” Apparently, there was no established, legal defense fund. Who knows where those donations ended up.
It’s not the first time Trump has stiffed people who invested in him.
He had six bankruptcies that cost his investors who had invested in him. He could care less.
Honorable Republicans won’t want to be part of a just-revealed scam. The congressional hearings have had the beneficial effect of forcing the Republicans to start talking about reality and the real major issues facing the country.
Let’s hope the GOP can find its bearings as a result of the facts and truths coming out of the TV hearings.
John Torinus is the chairman of Serigraph Inc. and a former Milwaukee Sentinel business editor who blogs regularly at johntorinus.com.
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“The first one to recant and get back to bread and butter politics will stand a better chance of winning the primary in two months.”
I see no indication of that, but I live in Washington County. Maybe it’s different elsewhere in WI.
The State GOP can continue to ignore reality because most of our GOP lawmakers are in safe seats, thanks to their masterful art of gerrymandering.
How many voters in Burlington, Rochester or Sturtevant approve of the $900K spent on Gableman’s sham “investigation”?
How many voters in Brookfield, Watertown, or even (gasp!) West Bend or Waukesha are comfortable with the fact that their U.S. Congressman’s very first official act after being sworn in was to vote to reject state-certified electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania, giving the election to Donald Trump? How many of those same voters are proud that their U.S. Congressman made the State Capitol in Madison available to a bogus group of Republicans to create their own slate of electoral votes showing Trump won, and then transmit those results to state and federal officials—despite knowing they “were not duly elected presidential electors” and had no authority to do so?
No need for reality when you’ve stacked the legislature and the federal courts (thank you Mitch) in your favor. An extremely conservative retired Federal Judge tells us there is a “clear and present danger” to our democracy, that Trump’s Republican coup attempt was just a warm up for 2024 if Republicans lose the vote. How will our elected Republicans react? They play the long game very well on all fronts, and our Grand Experiment of 246 years is in serious jeopardy.
Good article. It is very disappointing when Congressman Mike Gallagher of Green Bay stays silent on investigation into the January 6 riot. According to media accounts during the riot, he had grabbed his ceremonial Marine sword that he keeps in his office and was ready to slice and dice any rioters who threatened him or his staff.
Torinus hasn’t come around to the new GOP. Look at what the party has done to the two House members on the 1/6 committee – they’ve disowned them, and Liz Cheney was no back-bench party member. The new GOP has gone all-in on conspiracy theories, total falsehoods and complete subversion to Trump. The ones that don’t publicly support all these pieces certainly don’t speak out against them; they would prefer to remain silent because they think it will keep them elected. Grothman rants weekly about how many trips he’s taken to the Mexican border and how Biden stopped oil companies from pumping oil to jack up the price, but you never hear him talk about 1/6 because even if he thinks it was bad he can’t say that because he wants to keep him job.
The GOP legislature is equally terrible; they’ve spent 4 years pretending Evers didn’t win an election. They go on vacation in March of every election year even though they’re paid full-time salaries with benefits. Meanwhile they refuse to even hold a hearing for dozens of gubernatorial appointments to prevent Evers from doing the job he was elected to do. Now they want to give all elections power to themselves or back to the Secretary of State office (assuming they win that election) so they can officially overturn any election result they don’t like. Do you think they’ll ever accept they lost an election again? Why should they?
Welcome to the new GOP John; they have no principles other than staying in power.
John- The only way that GOPs will deal with reality is when they get their butts kicked in elections because they won’t deal with reality. That means that you and other allegedly “decent” Republicans need to VOTE THEM OUT in large numbers so they realize that riding the crazy train is a losing strategy. Both at the state and federal levels.
Right now, it hasn’t hurt them, and brought in some others who previously didn’t care much about politics. The bet GOPs are making is that they can attract enough Trump Trash to overcome ex-GOP and Independent voters that they lose for being pro-insurrectionist garbage.
Mr. Torinus – it is up to people like YOU to make the GOP pay a price.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Mike Gallagher is wanting.
Tiffany and Grothman are guilty of seditious conspiracy. Same as Fitz, RoJo, et al.
The state of WI, formerly a proud progressive leader, is now an effective dictatorship run by the corrupt gerrymandered legislature.
My district vote will not matter.
We still have some power statewide: governor and US Senator. That is where I will spend my energy.
Yes I will vote for a reasonable democratic state representative, but they would be the minority and have no power – -gerrymandering and oligarchy rule.
All hail to the Rich and the Corrupt!
They should be tried for treason.