(Spoiler alert -- hold your applause!)
“I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world. Has ambition so eclipsed principle?” -- Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT).
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"Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they’re wrong – and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions. Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government." -- Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NB).
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“They are sealing themselves inside the very tomb that Donald Trump built for them. When they commit this act on Wednesday, where do they go from there? . . . These people are wholly owned subsidiaries of Trump Inc. They are functionaries like the men and women who manage his properties and mop his bathrooms and clean his hotels.” -- former Republican National Committee Chairman and Never Trumper Michael Steele.
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"... Missouri’s freshman Republican senator, Josh Hawley, announced that on Wednesday, 14 days before Biden will be inaugurated, he will challenge the validity of Biden’s election. Hawley’s conscience regarding electoral proprieties compels him to stroke this erogenous zone of the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominating electorate.
Hawley’s stance quickly elicited panicky emulation from Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, another 2024 aspirant. Cruz led 10 other senators and senators-elect in a statement that presents their pandering to what terrifies them (their Trumpkin voters) as a judicious determination to assess the “unprecedented allegations” of voting improprieties, “allegations” exceeding “any in our lifetimes.” [snip]
Be that as it may, on Wednesday, the members of the Hawley-Cruz cohort will violate the oath of office in which they swore to defend the Constitution from enemies “foreign and domestic.” They are its most dangerous domestic enemies." -- George Will, paleo- conservative columnist.
It should be noted that those few elected Republicans publicly refusing to join the sedition caucus do so with a wink and a nod to lies about voting irregularities and/ or saying "our hands are tied" while proclaiming their support for the "policies" of Mango Mussolini (see Sens. Portman (R-OH), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Tom Cotton (R-AR), to name a few weasels). Most are too frightened to push back forcefully against the outrageous lies being peddled by Mango Mussolini about election fraud -- by simply stating that Biden/Harris won the election fair and square. Cotton and Portman, for example, want a sham commission to "study" the 2020 election that's already been studied, certified and litigated up the kazoo. So, they don't even merit a golf clap for doing what their oath of office compels them to do, notwithstanding what simple moral judgement should guide them to do.
(Cartoon: Robert Ariail, gocomics.com)
