Rob Portman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, the Capitol Hill police, ‘move on,’ and more.
Rob Portman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, the Capitol Hill police, ‘move on,’ and more
O n Monday, Rob Portman announced that he was retiring, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that she was running. This says a great deal. “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Portman is a Republican senator from Ohio (“Republican” in the pre-Trump sense). Sarah Huckabee Sanders, of course, is a Trump Republican, who is running for governor of Arkansas (a position her father once held).
I recall what Rod Blagojevich said, describing his political commitments: “If you’re asking what my party affiliation is, I’m a Trumpocrat.”
“Blago,” as you know, was the Democratic governor of Illinois, imprisoned for corruption. He is one of the many corrupt, imprisoned politicians or politicos whom Trump sprang, through pardons and commutations.
Writing about Senator Portman and his retirement, Josh Kraushaar, of National Journal, quoted a Portman adviser, Corry Bliss: “If you want to spend all your time on Fox and being an a**hole, there’s never been a better time to serve. But if you want to spend your time being thoughtful and getting sh** done, there’s never been a worse time to serve.”
A true statement, in addition to a pungent one.
Rob Portman comes from a world that has basically vanished. He is a conservative whom Bill Buckley and Ronald Reagan would recognize as one. In the White House of Bush the Elder, Portman served as a political aide. Then he got elected to the U.S. House.
In 1999, I was interviewing General Barry McCaffrey, the Gulf War hero who was serving as “drug czar” under President Clinton. McCaffrey brought up Portman, saying, “I hope he’s president of the United States in another twelve years. He’s one of the finest public servants I’ve met in America.”
Some people expected Portman to be president, and many wanted him to be.
In 2004, I was at a function in which I encountered Portman talking to another congressman, a little older than he. The other congressman was telling Portman the following:
“You say in the early stages of your career, ‘I’m not going to be president. I’m not going to be president.’ But you don’t necessarily mean it. You harbor a hope that you will be. Then there comes a time when you say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m really not going to be president.’”
At this point, the congressman got down on one knee, comically, and grasped Portman’s hand. “You’re my only hope,” he said. “You could be president. Would you remember me for a cabinet position?”
A lovely, light moment. Also a revealing one, when it comes to the political life.
Under Bush the Younger, Portman served as U.S. trade rep. Then as budget director. Later, he was elected to the Senate.
Portman knows things — a lot of them. He has a strong commitment to the American system, undergirded by the Constitution. He is versatile and competent. He is interested in more than rilin’ up the folks, via Fox. When it comes to today’s GOP, he’s a fish out of water. An utter alien.
At home in the Republican Party today — representative of it — is another Ohio politician, Jim Jordan. He is a House member. Trump, in his last days in office, gave Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why? Well, for being just about the Trumpiest of the Trumpy.
Trump gave the medal to Devin Nunes, too. He is another House member (a Republican from California). He may be the Trumpiest of the Trumpy. According to the citation, Nunes received the Medal of Freedom for uncovering “the greatest scandal in American history,” namely “the Russia Hoax.”
I believe that Trump wrote that citation himself, capitalization and all.
• Ages ago, there was a Saturday Night Live skit, a game show: “Quién es más macho?” Who is more macho, or most macho? I’ve said that politics on the right can seem an endless round of this game. (See this column, for example, or this.)
Earlier this month, a Trump spokesman, Hogan Gridley, was on television — Fox, of course — saying that Trump is “the most masculine person, I think, to ever hold the White House.” Too bad for George Washington. Too bad for U. S. Grant. Too bad for Theodore Roosevelt, and many others.
Masculinity or manliness is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
Apparently, Trump had a message for Mike Pence: “You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a p***y.” This was when Trump was demanding that the vice president obstruct our election process.
“Patriot” or “p***y.” Such a manly, manly man, Donald J. Trump.
If you listen to GOP presidential aspirants, you can see that the 2024 GOP race is shaping up to be a game of “Quién es más MAGA?”
On Fox (of course), Nikki Haley said, “I don’t even think there’s a basis for impeachment.” Then: “At some point, I mean, give the man a break!”
Poor Trump. (Has there been as much sympathy expressed for the Capitol Hill police?)
And here is Marco Rubio:
Waste of time impeachment isn’t about accountability
It’s about demands from vengeance from the radical left
And a new “show” for the “Political Entertainment Industry”
Judging by this, his tweets aren’t even literate anymore. Part of his descent into Trumpism.
Maybe he’ll be “primaried” by a real Trump: Ivanka. That’d be something.
By the way, there are many, many people who believe that Trump should have been impeached, as he was. One such person is Liz Cheney. Is she, too, part of the “radical left”? According to the new doctrine — the new madness — yes.
Meanwhile, Josh Hawley is all over the media, screaming that he is being muzzled, stifled. Whoever is in charge of muzzling or stifling Hawley is really falling down on the job. The senator is in our faces 24/7.
I recall a witticism from the ’90s: “The ‘love that dare not speak its name’ has become the love that will not shut up.”
Word from Mar-a-Lago is, Trump is thinking about starting another political party, to be called “the Patriot Party.” First: “Patriot” is maybe the most abused word in America today. It is in dire need of being rescued from its abusers. Second: How could there be a Trumpier party than the GOP? There is just a handful of dissenters. I don’t know how it could be “purer.”
Senator Kevin Cramer, of North Dakota, has been reliably Trumpy. Proudly Trumpy. Yet, somehow, he drew short of trying to overturn the election. “There are a lot of Republicans who would like my head,” he said this week. “I haven’t been loyal enough.”
Loyal to . . . what? Whom? You see how sick this is?
Giuliani tweeted, “How about we keep the Party of Lincoln, Reagan and Trump and the traitors leave.” How about we keep the name “Trump” separate from those other two.
• If you live long enough, you see that things repeat themselves, in strange ways. In the late ’90s, the Democrats said, “Move on!” It was maybe their most frequent cry. Indeed, there was a whole organization founded, named “MoveOn.”
Just after Clinton left office, I wrote a piece entitled “Clinton’s Rosenberg Case.” (It was about his clemency for Susan Rosenberg, a Weather Underground terrorist.) Its subheading was, “Before we ‘move on.’”
Today, I hear this from Republicans: “Move on.” Well, not just yet, please. The body count is still mounting.
The physical toll on officers who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack by a pro-Trump mob is becoming clearer, with reports by police officials and federal prosecutors indicating that about 140 officers were injured, the head of the Capitol Police officers’ union said.
Do “blue lives matter,” by the way?
The union official said, “I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained head injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake, to name some of the injuries.”
The article continues,
Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick died after trying to defend the Capitol from rioters. One Capitol Police officer and one D.C. police officer who were responding on the scene have died by suicide since the attack.
And so on and so forth. So, I’m not movin’ on just yet, thank you very much.
• Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) tweeted,
A lot of Americans are going to think it’s strange that the Senate is spending its time trying to convict and remove from office a man who left office a week ago.
Yeah? So? A lot of Americans think a lot of things are strange. The point of leadership — or one of them — is to explain. And persuade. And lead.
A lot of Americans think opposition to abortion is strange. A lot of Americans think support of private gun ownership is strange. A lot of Americans think opposition to the estate tax is strange.
So?
• Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, tweeted,
The U.S. Senate cannot convict a former President.
The U.S. Senate cannot convict a former President.
The U.S. Senate cannot convict a former President.
The U.S. Senate cannot convict a former President.
The U.S. Senate cannot convict a former President.
Period.
I’m reminded of a story about Einstein. One hundred “Aryan” scientists signed a statement that the theory of relativity was a Jewish hoax (or whatever). Asked for a response, Einstein said, “If what they are saying were true, one signature would have been enough.”
If what Walker is saying were true — one statement would be enough.
• From an article on Madison Cawthorn, the new GOP congressman from North Carolina, in Time:
Less than three weeks before pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol, resulting in five deaths, then-Congressman-elect Cawthorn delivered a speech at a Turning Point student summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., urging thousands of mostly unmasked young conservatives to “lightly threaten” their representatives. “Call your Congressman,” he said to the young people, offering them a script: “Say, ‘You know what? If you don’t start supporting election integrity, I’m coming after you, Madison Cawthorn is coming after you. Everybody’s coming after you.’”
Oh, yeah.
Some more:
Hours before the Jan. 6 riot on the Capitol — in which an angry mob did, in fact, come after members of Congress — Cawthorn again addressed an agitated crowd just south of the White House, this time commending them for their pugnacity. “This crowd has some fight in it!” he said, gesturing out to the crowd with one hand while his other one gripped a microphone.
Oh, yeah.
Finally,
When the Capitol was breached, forcing lawmakers to take shelter behind wooden furniture and in crudely barricaded offices, Cawthorn called into conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk’s live podcast, where he suggested that his wheelchair allowed him to carry “multiple weapons” and entertained a radical conspiracy theory that the riot was carried out by actors planted by the left. “I believe that this was agitators strategically placed inside of this group—you can call them antifa, you can call them people paid by the Democratic machine,” he said.
Sure. This is the spirit of the GOP today.
Let me ask you: Who is more representative of today’s Republican Party? Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene or Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney? To ask the question is to answer it, right?
• Obviously, Trump will get off, again. I say: Try to convict him anyway. You will be able to say, in years to come, “We tried to uphold the rule of law. We tried to impose consequences for an assault on the American system. We tried to hold Trump accountable.” There is honor in that.
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