Op- Ed: Are Republicans Cutting Our Throats, or Theirs?

By John Swan

 On the face of it, things look pretty bleak. Only a day after celebrating Joe Biden’s win it became obvious the chaos was not over. And while the media focuses on Trump’s efforts to “win” the election, the backstories are even bleaker.

Trump knows he lost. The real strategy is more sinister. These lawsuits and republican denials of Biden’s win have two purposes.

They are a giant scam to raise money for Trump’s PAC, that is putting it in “leadership funds” with virtually no oversite as to how it can be used. And most disturbing, these bogus efforts are the setup for making sure Biden’s presidency is a failure, despite the need to arrest the Covid 19 crisis and revive the economy. Trump is already putting cronies in positions of power and striping any Obama regulations he can.

Add to this the intimidation and death threats from Trump supporters to both democrats or republicans who resist against this coup attempt, and any level-headed American has got to be cringing each time they turn on the TV or a page in their newspaper.

And don’t think it’s finally ended because the Supreme Court laughed out the suit seeking to nullify millions of Biden votes in battleground states filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who himself is under both federal and state investigations, accused of bribery and abuse of office

These criminals have one more card to play. On January 6 the electoral votes will be presented to congress. The republicans plan to contest the electors from the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

If both houses accept all the electoral votes, that part of the scam is over. But if the Senate votes to reject them, it goes to the governors of those states to decide if they want to overturn a legal election. 

And republicans do this brazenly, out in the open, red meat for their base. Sixteen red states, and 126 republicans in congress joined the fraudulent suit.

But it still remains to be seen how the majority of American citizens are going to react to this constant chaos of lies, incompetence, and power grabs, not to mention insanity.

The republican base gets a lot of press because they scream the loudest, and are the most threatening with their guns and anger. What would happen if they begin shooting officials or bomb a building?

They are counting on “soft liberals” to fold, hide out in their (mostly) comfortable homes, and fight over toilet paper. At the same time they are daring the Democratic Party to match their seemingly unlimited audacity, an audacity republican operatives could very well lose control over if the militias turn violent.

Rush Limbaugh and others have already suggested the South secede, again, from the union, only to pull that back after, I’m sure, talking to his lawyer. But that’s what they do: throw out bombs, then say they didn’t really mean it. Of course, their base gets the message.

The senate races in Georgia will be the first sign of how much public grassroots resistance there is. If, and that’s a big if, the dems pull out both, and even one, of the races, it could signal what Churchill once called, “…the beginning of the end” for the Republican Party. 

Bill Pascrell, Democratic Congressman from New Jersey is demanding “that the 126 Republicans who have endorsed a malignant lawsuit to overturn the will of the people and undermine our democracy not be seated in Congress.”

Attorney General Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania has already called Paxton’s suit “a seditious abuse of the judicial process.”

Sedition is defined as “the act of inciting revolt or violence against a lawful authority with the goal of destroying or overthrowing it.”

It will be interesting to see who continues to support Trump if democrats pull this lever.

 Trump knows he’s in for some legal, and possibly congressional, trouble when he leaves office, so he’s willing to do (almost?) anything to save his skin.

The question will be, what are the majority of Americans willing to do? A lot of people are feed up. Are they capable of their own audacity? They may surprise everyone. 

John Swan is a founding staff reporter of Gazette Publications, and is currently a free-lance writer living in Jamaica Plain. 

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