January 6 Committee Erases All Doubt
The recent hearings of the January 6 committee make certain things about the events of January 6 and later very clear. With the disclosures that basically all Republican campaign, administration, and government officials knew immediately that the “stolen election” BS was just that, BS, it becomes even more evident that the genesis of this monster that now threatens our democracy was a very small group of insurrectionists and bomb throwers.
At the leadership level, we’ve learned that essentially all Trump’s campaign staff, his legal team, his AG, his numbers people, his daughter, all said “It’s over, you lost.” Noticeable in the parade of witnesses before the January 6 committee is the fact that anyone involved with the campaign or the election knew immediately that Trump had lost and said so. It’s too bad they didn't say this in public, but Trump and the people working for him knew.
Your rank and file Republicans aren't part of the equation. They are sheep, happy to go along with whatever Trump says because they share his hatreds.
The hard core enablers and architects were a small group. The people who nodded and encouraged Trump – and manufactured the “evidence” to support his claim – made up a small group of, er, deplorables: Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Mike Lindel, Peter Navarro, Roger Stone. Mainly third tier streetfighters, exactly the sort of Segretti’s that Donald Trump tends to accumulate.
Then, there is that special group of elected officials who cared so little for democracy that they were willing to go along with the lie, indeed, help invent the lie. That's most of the party now but at the start, it didn’t involve that many. Leadership clearly knew Trump had lost and that his actions on January 6 were probably seditious. Two of the leaders of the attempt to overthrow our democracy, from Day 1, are Scott Perry and Doug Mastriano. Yes, when the histories address Trump and the existential danger to our democratic system, two local politicians will loom very large in creating that threat. It's remarkable that this tiny area can produce two such dangerous persons. So the question is, do either of them believe it? Or is it pure expediency? My conclusion is, nobody is THAT stupid. Think about it -- when these guys were heating things up last November and December, putting together the first phony “legislative hearings” and maneuvering to install an insurrectionist as attorney general, every meeting they attended, the political pro's AND the administration officials AND the electeds were all telling them this was complete BS. And it didn't slow them down a bit; they went forward with their coup plans. These elected officials are two of the most dangerous politicians in America.
But though few of them believed the lies, the Republican party has benefited from them in major ways. A blizzard of new laws has been passed to make it harder for Democrats to vote and to allow the politicians to take control of elections in ways that were forbidden in 2020.
And our friends and neighbors who supported these ridiculous lies? Well, how they react now that they know Trump has been lying all along will tell us a lot about them.