Forgive me if I’m not celebrating the courage of all those South Carolina Republicans who are now shocked – shocked! – by President Chaos after spending years training him. With the impressive exception of Tom Rice of Myrtle Beach, you don’t suddenly become a hero because you refuse to support the guy who inspired the worst attack on America’s Capitol since the British burned him down in 1814.
Lindsey Graham, Mick Mulvaney, Nikki Haley, Nancy Mace – all those courageous profiles who were more than happy to travel on the Trump train – are jumping in the hour. It was “a hellish journey”, as Graham said, but “enough”.
Going after Mexicans and Muslims was one thing. Of course, Charlottesville was a little strange, even for (some) Republicans, and those kids in cages on the border too. But when the barbarians show up at the gate of their own home, the People’s House, with zipper ties, and start releasing gas masks on the Senate floor, then this is really infringing on their personal freedom. In addition, the base does not like masks.
“They could have blown up the building,” said Graham with all the indignation he usually reserves in defense of The Boss. “They could have killed us all! ”
Bailey
It would always end like this, or something like that. Trump has not changed; Trump will never change, and that is exactly what MAGA believers love about him. It’s not as if Graham didn’t know. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he told us the famous truth: Trump was “crazy”, “crazy”, “unfit for the job”.
And then Trump was elected, and Graham ended up becoming Sycophant One – in Congress, on the golf course, in Air Force One. But he was not alone. Trump was Nikki Haley’s ticket to the United Nations and Henry McMaster to the governor’s office. Mick Mulvaney went from zero tea party to Trump’s budget director and then spent a long year as interim team leader, allowing “Trump to be Trump”.
All were cheerleaders and apologists for the worst president in American history. Trump lied, shared and played with the racial animus. He leaves office with a virus that kills 4,000 Americans a day, the economy in shambles, especially for those at the base, and a nation more divided than at any time since the Civil War.
To my Trump friends, I say this: everything you thought you received from the guy was not worth it. The price was too high.
And yet, after we knew exactly who he was, Graham, Mulvaney and the others wanted to put this narcissistic madman back in the White House for another four years. For the past two months, while Trump has been relentlessly pressing his Big Lie, that the election was stolen from him, they have been silent or worse. They fed the fire.
The South Carolina Five – Republican congressmen Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, Tom Rice, William Timmons and Joe Wilson – voted shamefully to overturn the election. Lindsey Graham could not recognize that Joe Biden won until he was frightened by the Trump terrorists.
Our governor – who liked to boast of being the first elected official in the state to endorse Trump – described the attack on the Capitol as a bad day at the office. Alan Wilson, our Republican attorney general, wants you to believe that he was as surprised as anyone with those robotic calls from his party’s attorney generals association calling “patriots” to Washington.
The only South Carolina Republican who really put his career at risk was Rice, who out of the blue voted for Trump’s impeachment on Wednesday. It was a bold move in the bright red of the 7th Congressional District and it practically guarantees him a major challenge in two years. This is called political courage, something that is not seen very often today.
For four years, many Republicans have been voluntary partners, complicit in the collapse of our institutions and the trust that unites us.
You can’t pretend that everything that happened in the past two weeks was just a nightmare. The road to redemption is not so easy. It requires faithfulness to the truth and facts that are lacking in our society today.
Donald Trump just didn’t happen. He had a lot of help, and his helpers need to take what they broke.
Steve Bailey can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter @ sjbailey1960.
