Nikki Haley, who was former President Donald Trump’s first UN ambassador and fancies herself the future first woman president, was asked on Fox News about former Vice President Mike Pence’s break with Trump in a speech where he called Trump’s attempt to overturn the election “wrong” and “un-American.” Haley replied that she’s “not a fan of Republicans going against Republicans.”
If she’s being sincere, surely she’s aghast at the Republican-on-Republican attacks at her party’s winter meeting last week. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel proposed a resolution to censure Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger—both Jan. 6 Committee members, and therefore traitors to the GOP—for leading the persecution of “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” It passed overwhelmingly by voice vote.
The two events reveal a three-way rift in the party over how to deal with Jan. 6—which, despite the GOP’s efforts, won’t go away.
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In one faction are the Big Lie die-hards who sympathize with Trump’s desire to pardon those who helped him, violent or not. They’re perfectly fine being known as the insurrection party.
Then there’s the group who’d rather not be forever associated with the sacking of the Capitol, but they’re not going to make much of a fuss about it or stand against the RNC.
Then there’s the smallest group, headlined by Pence, who believe the only way to deal with Jan. 6 is to admit what it was—a crime against democracy.
When McDaniel realized she’d said the quiet part out loud, she backtracked, saying that by “legitimate” she meant “peaceful.” Her primary concern, she claims, was the legal fees and other aggravation being borne by a peaceful friend who’d been subpoenaed to explain her part in a plot to submit fake electors.
Not even McDaniel’s uncle, Sen. Mitt Romney, bought her excuse. He’s long resisted criticizing his niece but quickly came to the defense of the censured pair of Republicans as “persons of conscience” to whom “honor attaches,” before calling the whole resolution “stupid.”
Other senators forced to comment Monday hemmed and hawed as usual. The fist-pumping Sen. Josh Hawley said he’d let the RNC “speak for [sic] themselves,” Sen. Charles Grassley noted “it’s a big tent party”—with room, I guess, for cop-bashing rioters. The rest mostly voiced variations on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s needlepoint sentiment to “look forward, not backward.”
Congressional Republicans have spent the past year minimizing Jan. 6—describing it as the work of a few bad apples, tourists gone wild, or antifa infiltrating a parade of patriots. The RNC’s resolution takes it a step further, codifying the riot and the Big Lie that inspired it into mainstream Republicanism.
The Capitol riot left five people dead, 140 police officers injured, close to 800 people prosecuted, and the cost of damages from the breaking of windows, smashing of doors, toppling of statues, trashing of offices, and permanent stains on centuries-old marble floors from spilled blood and defecation is somewhere around $2 million.
This seems like an easy thing for elected officials to roundly condemn. But that’s just not within the acceptable discourse of the modern Republican Party.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to his credit, called the insurrection an insurrection. But then, true to form, but mumbled fatuously that it’s not the job of the RNC to be “singling out” specific Republicans to be supported or not. Actually, Mitch, that’s pretty much the RNC’s entire job.
The RNC’s endorsement of the marauders who followed Trump’s order to “fight like hell” makes Pence’s labeling Trump for what he is a minor miracle.
A particularly obsequious number two, Pence is no hero. But in the long arc of history the former vice president will stand apart from the RNC—which deserves eternal damnation for punishing the two GOP voices defending the constitution against Trump. Pence deserves extra credit for his choice of venue to denounce Trump’s attempt to steal the election—a meeting of the Federalist Society, the conservative organization that guided Trump to his Supreme Court picks. It’s not a group that would react with Bronx cheers even if appalled by Pence’s candor, but neither is it one likely to erupt in applause for someone who came close to calling Trump treasonous. But it did, enthusiastically.
On the other hand, ironically, his abject subservience makes his rebuke more remarkable. Sure, the timing was calculated. Pence has a nose for power and he may have sensed Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP loosening, even if just a bit.
But his motivation doesn’t matter. What’s important is that the former second highest-ranking Republican did it at all. There were no fresh chants of “Hang Mike Pence.” Trump had no insults left to hurl at him. Pence’s chances of running successfully in 2024 are no worse than they were before. He’s living proof that you can wound the king and live to fight another day.
There might even be a near-future when kids will ask their Republican parents, “What did you do during the coup, Daddy?”—and pretending Trump didn’t shame his party and country with a violent attempt to overturn an election will be seen for the cowardice it is.
Haley might not like “Republicans going after Republicans,” but she obviously doesn’t mind when it’s a mob of Trump sycophants going after a few principled Republicans. What the country needs is more Cheneys, Kinzingers and Pences going against the former president for his crimes against democracy. They are the true patriots of the GOP, and history will treat them kindly—at least compared to the cowards.
