In 2020 the Republican Party declined to articulate a platform, telling voters that the party stood for whatever Trump says. So when Trump insisted he won the 2020 election, it should have been little surprise that the party embraced the “big lie.” As of yesterday, the purge of politicians unwilling to support the party line is complete. Accordingly, the time has come to recognize that the GOP has crossed a line. It’s core animating principle is now seditious conspiracy, which should disqualify it from further participation in American politics, forcing a new party to organize and represent the views of the law-abiding American right.
The U.S. Code defines seditious conspiracy (among other things) as “two or more persons . . . conspir[ing] . . . to oppose by force the authority [of the Government], or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States . . .” Congress gathered on January 6 to execute the most fundamental of our laws, those providing for the peaceful transfer of federal power. Trump and those around him organized an armed mob to come to Washington to oppose and delay the execution of those laws, which mob then set off for the Capitol at the personal and public behest of the leader of the GOP. This was only the most visible part of a broad conspiracy to fraudulently overturn the lawful results of the election.
The GOP could have preserved its place as a legitimate party (although engaged in the most aggressive and least principled sort of politics) simply by distancing itself from this seditious conspiracy. A few individual Republican politicians did. But the party has now fallen completely under the control of those who did not. The single litmus test for GOP candidates is now, in Trump’s words, assertion that the lawmakers gathered on January 6 were trying “illegally to take over the country,” illegal because Trump “won in a landslide.”
Thanks to the consistent advocacy of the ACLU and other liberal (in the traditional sense) groups, the reach of the First Amendment is broad. Indeed, the fringe (neo-Nazi, white supremacist) right survived and eventually grew into a vigorous political force under the umbrella of First Amendment protection. But that protection has limits. Speech is protected until that speech becomes likely to incite imminent lawless action (as the Supreme Court put it, “advocacy [that] is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action”).
The national GOP (now the puppet of the same network of shadowy zealots who worked to install “fake electors”) is systematically engaged in advocating and executing plans under which state election officials will violate their oaths and the law to ensure Trump’s victory, and state legislatures will, if necessary, ignore the popular vote and designate electors loyal to Trump. The seditious conspiracy did not end on January 6, it has continued with increased vigor every day since.
I hope that Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney and scores of other courageous and principled conservative politicians will now finally quit the GOP, organize a successor party, and vigorously contest the 2024 Presidential election. A third party home for the nation’s many conservatives would, as a practical matter, also make it much easier to proceed with prosecution of the Trump party for seditious conspiracy and other offenses. The national GOP should be disqualified from participation in national politics until and unless it affirms its support for the constitution and the rule of law, and promises to abide by the results of the legal process by which contested elections are resolved[1].
A reminder from history: Authoritarian forces almost always gain power through elections. After that, there is no going back, since job one for such newly elected authoritarians is to compromise the democratic institutions through which they could thereafter be opposed. Trump tried this and failed in 2020. The Trumpists, now free of responsible mainstream Republicans who reigned in such instincts between 2016 and 2019, won’t make the same mistakes again. Moreover, the bright line between conventional means and political violence has been crossed, and TrumpWorld is now armed to the teeth.
Ms. Cheney, now is the time. After 2024, it will be too late.
[1] Trump himself should have been replaced as the party’s nominee in 2016 when he refused to promise to abide by the results of the election unless he won.