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Critiques of Cheney and J6 witnesses as Trump enabling Republicans who are scrambling for redemption [1]

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Date: 2022-07-23

I offer for your consideration and opinions two OpEds about Rep. Liz Cheney and other Republicans from the Trump administration who supported him and his policies while they worked for him and are now disavowing him because of his attempts to undermine the results of a democratic election. Both essays address the attempts of these individuals to redeem themselves. One article is in Salon. You can read it without a subscription:

The author, Lucian K. Truscott IV, begins:

You don't even have to look for the tell. It's right there in the first thing they say after they "cooperate" with the Jan. 6 Committee: The Republican functionary witnesses sit there looking smug and self-satisfied as they tell what they know about what Trump did and the puny shit they did to try to stop him, and when they're finished they've been told they can smile and say, "but just look at his accomplishments." That creation stamped out of a prep-mold in a suit and tie sitting at the witness stand on Thursday night with the last name Pottinger was a perfect example of the con job they're trying to run. Why, I was so horrified by what I saw when I got finished with my off-site meeting with India's ambassador to the United States that I resigned! Then what does Pottinger tell us? A complete and utter crap-load of smarmy claptrap about how dedicated he is to "national security," and how proud he was that he served as deputy national security adviser, and how Trump got "tough" with China and put together some treaty in the Middle East that's not worth the paper it's written on.

The other article is a New York Times OpEd by Michelle Goldberg. You need a subscription to read it.

Goldberg’s points mirror Tuscott’s in many ways. She begins her essay as follows:

A central theme of the Jan. 6 hearings has been Republican redemption. A parade of Republican witnesses has testified to being pushed beyond the limits of their loyalty to Donald Trump. For some, the breaking point came when he tried to enlist them in a scheme to overturn state elections. Others revolted at the former president’s attempts to corrupt the Justice Department, or at his role in inciting an insurrection.

Here are a few more excerpts:

It is a sign of the committee Democrats’ love of country that they have allowed the hearings to proceed this way. They are crafting a story about Jan. 6 as a battle between Republican heroism and Republican villainy. It seems intended to create a permission structure for Trump supporters to move on without having to disavow everything they loved about his presidency, or to admit that Jan. 6 was the logical culmination of his sadistic politics. If you believe, as I do, that Trump’s sociopathy makes him a unique threat to this country’s future, it makes sense to try to lure Republicans away from him rather than damn them for their complicity. There is a difference, however, between a smart narrative and an accurate one. In truth, you can’t cleave Trump and his most shameless antidemocratic enablers off from the rest of the Republican Party, because the party has been remade in his image. They all were, everyone who kept that catastrophic administration functioning at a minimal level while Trump built the cult of personality that made Jan. 6 possible. It’s important to remember their culpability because Trump is probably going to run for president again, and he could win. If he does, Republicans who like to think of themselves as good people, who don’t want to spend their lives in the right-wing fever swamps, will be faced with the question of whether to serve him. They will see the former Trump officials who were able to rebrand despite sticking with him almost to the end, and they might think there’s not much to lose. In his bracing book, “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell,” Tim Miller, a former Republican National Committee spokesman, tries to understand why friends and associates who once hated Trump eventually submitted to him. “There were thousands of people who at some level complied with Trump who weighed the costs,” he wrote. “Who knew the dangers,” who might have chosen a different path if “they could have imagined a different, more fulfilling future for themselves.” The Jan. 6 committee is trying, against the suck of Trump’s dark gravity, to point the way to such a future. To do that, it has been liberal with absolution. That doesn’t mean absolution is deserved.

As of this writing there are 329 comments, many of which are very well thought out, on the NY Times article. One of the reader picks is by TPM from St. Louis. It is similar to many of the other comments. It is as follows:

I am glad that people like Pottinger, Cassidy Hutchins, Sara Mathews, Pat Cippolone et al. testified / provided info/evidence regarding the plans and actions of Trump and his band of conspirators / action teams to steal back the election and to organize/implement the Jan 6th insurrection. BUT I am completely baffled and appalled by these same people believing that their work in Trump's Administration actually did good things for America for which they should be proud. I just do not see it. And I think history will judge Trump personally and as well as these same people very harshly. As well it should.

If you subscribe to the NYT of course you can comment there, but whether you do or don’t here is an opportunity to share your opinion and open a dialogue on the subject with fellow Kossacks.

I’ll grab the first comment to share my own opinion which is a work in progress.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/23/2112109/-Critiques-of-Cheney-and-J6-witnesses-as-Trump-enabling-Republicans-who-are-scrambling-for-redemption

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