I’ve been cut off from posting on BB BBS due to technical problems and other commitments, and I missed the HCR posts here the most.
One thing I would have expected to be noticed and definitely would have commented on myself if I’d been around:
The term Kristallnacht is under strong scrutiny since the late 1980s, and I would not use it myself ever again to describe the pogroms of 1938.
It is highly inappropriate, in this case and others, to use it.
I’m having trouble finding a reference to this. Most US sources, both Jewish history sites and Holocaust museum sites, still use the term. Could you elaborate or point to a good source to help understand?
It did come up:
It’s not a particularly complex issue. The preferred terminology in German these days is Pogromnacht (Night of the Pogrom) sometimes Reichspogromnacht or the Novemberpogrom, sometimes pluralised.
The background being that Reichskristallnacht or Kristallnacht were terms given to the events by the Nazis or their sympathetic press as a cynical celebration of the events.
Many people consider it wrong to use the term that the Nazis coined to mock the victims/ minimise the events to describe what happened.
It wasn’t just glass that got broken. It wasn’t just a few kids in high spirits getting carried away and breaking a few windows.
ETA: It also wasn’t a series of separate spontaneous outbursts of outrage, it was a carefully planned and orchestrated event.
That debate doesn’t seem to have come up in English speaking parts of the world at all. I certainly can’t find any discussion of it with an admittedly brief web search.
I suspect English speakers probably would never or rarely have come across the phrase used in its original cynical sense (other than in academic contexts) so it’s not surprising the usage is different.
I agree with everything you wrote except the idea that is not a complex issue. But all details aside, and not to derail, I suggest to avoid the term.
February 2, 2021 (Tuesday)
Today, on the same day that the remains of Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who was killed in the January 6 insurrection, lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, the House impeachment managers filed their trial brief for the upcoming Senate impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump. The charge is that he incited the insurrection attempt of January 6, 2021, in which a mob stormed the Capitol to stop the counting of the certified electoral ballots for the 2020 election.
Led by Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former professor of constitutional law, the managers laid out Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and his incitement of a violent mob to stop Congress from confirming the victory of Joseph Biden in the election. They note that Trump bears “singular responsibility” for the tragedy of January 6 and dismiss his argument that the Senate cannot convict him now because he is no longer in office, countering that such an understanding would give a president “a free pass to commit high crimes and misdemeanors near the end of their term.”
The managers detailed Trump’s deliberate attempt to convince his followers of a lie: that he won the election in a “landslide,” and that Democrats had “stolen” the apparent victory. They say he “amplified these lies at every turn, seeking to convince supporters that they were victims of a massive electoral conspiracy that threatened the Nation’s continued existence.” But the courts rejected his arguments, and state and federal officials refused to cave to his demands that they break the law to alter the election results. So Trump announced a “Save America Rally,” urging his supporters to come to Washington, D.C., to “fight” for his reelection. He promised the rally would be “wild.”
Trump, they note, “spent months insisting to his base that the only way he could lose the election was a dangerous, wide-ranging conspiracy against them that threatened America itself.” He urged them to stop the counting on January 6, “by making plans to ‘fight like hell’ and ‘fight to the death’ against this ‘act of war’ by ‘Radical Left Democrats’ and the ‘weak and ineffective RINO section of the Republican Party.’”
On January 6, he urged his supporters to go to the Capitol to stop what he called the massive fraud taking place there. He told them, “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Carrying Trump flags, the mob marched to the Capitol and broke in, searching specifically for Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump blamed for counting the votes accurately, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. One shouted, “What are we waiting for? We already voted and what have they done? They stole it! We want our fcking country back! Let’s take it!” Others shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and “Tell Pelosi we’re coming for that btch.”
Allegedly “delighted” at the interruption to the vote count, Trump retweeted a video of his rally speech telling his supporters to be “strong” and, even as Pence and his family were hiding from the violent mob, tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” This sent the mob into a frenzy.
Then, while the Senate was evacuated, Trump tried to reach the new senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, to urge him to continue to delay the counting of the electoral votes.
Members of both houses from both parties called the president to urge him to call off the mob, but for more than three hours, he refused. When he finally issued a video telling his followers to go home, he said, “[i]t was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side.” He told them: “We love you, you’re very special.”
Later that night he tweeted: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
Trump’s new legal team issued its response to the House impeachment managers today, as well. They stand on the ground that, because Trump is no longer president, it is unconstitutional to try him on an article of impeachment. They also deny that the former president incited the insurrection and say he was simply exercising his First Amendment rights when he repeatedly attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Far from backing down from his position, Trump is continuing to assert his argument that he won the election. “With very few exceptions,” his lawyers’ response reads, “under the convenient guise of Covid-19 pandemic ‘safeguards’ states [sic] election laws and procedures were changed by local politicians or judges without the necessary approvals from state legislatures. Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false.”
Trump’s argument has been dismissed in more than 60 court cases, so there is plenty of evidence to conclude that it is false. But he is doubling down on what scholars of authoritarianism call a “big lie:” that he was the true winner of the 2020 election, and that the Democrats stole it. The big lie, a key propaganda tool that is associated with Nazi Germany, is a lie so huge that no one can believe it is false. If leaders repeat it enough times, refusing to admit that it is a lie, people come to think it is the truth because surely no one would make up anything so outrageous.
In this case, Trump supporters insist that there was massive fraud in the 2020 election (there wasn’t) and that Trump really won (he didn’t). As Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) pointed out last week, the Republicans who supported Trump’s big lie and challenged the counting of the electoral votes on January 6 still have not admitted they were lying.
Big lies are springboards for authoritarian politicians. They enable a leader to convince followers that they were unfairly cheated of power by those that the leader demonizes. That Trump and his supporters are continuing to advance their big lie, even in the face of overwhelming proof that it is false, is deeply concerning.
If there is any need to prove that Trump’s big lie is, indeed, a lie, there is plenty of proof in the fact that when the leader of the company Trump surrogates blamed for facilitating election fraud threatened to sue them, they backed down fast. The voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems was at the center of Trump supporters’ claims of a stolen election, and its leadership has threatened to sue the conservative media network Newsmax for its personalities’ false statements. When the threat of a lawsuit first emerged, Newsmax issued an on-air disclaimer.
Today, even as Trump’s lawyers were reiterating his insistence that he really won the election, the issue came up again. When MyPillow founder Mike Lindell began to spout Trump’s big lie on a Newsmax show, the co-anchor tried repeatedly to cut him off. When he was unsuccessful, the producers muted Lindell while the co-anchor said, “We at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those kinds of allegations…. We just want to let people know that there’s nothing substantive that we have seen.”
He read a legal disclaimer: “Newsmax accepts the [election] results as legal and final. The courts have also supported that view.” And then he stood up and left the set.
This part is the most infuriating, and why those GOP members who refuse to admit the truth need to be removed from office. The next election cycle begins three months from now in PA. The strain on election officials because of the pandemic was made worse by the undermining, interference, and harassment conducted by the previous administration and Trump supporters. The USPS is still recovering, too.
We need to these folks to face harsh penalties to make it clear a repeat of the drama and violence won’t be tolerated. Otherwise, we cannot restore confidence among voters, poll workers, and election officials that they will be safe and the process will be protected. A clear message should be sent that certified election results (at federal and state levels) must be respected. If challenges are taken to court, and the court rules against them, that’s the end of it.
Same in VA. State offices up for election this year. We need to keep up pressure to take or keep those offices.
& @LutherBlisset Thank you both. I appreciate your responses and insight. As a firm believer that words have power, I will do my level best to promulgate the better terms for Pogromnacht here in the US.
FTR, because I think it matters: German Wikipedia has some information on the - as I hunted - complex discussion.
Try deepl.com on the passages on the section
Bezeichnungen up to the next section, Kommunales Gedenken, pasted for your convenience behind the click. (DeepL does a better job than GTranslate, but of course is not as convenient. Also, you need to split the text in passages, since DeepL only translates 5000 words in one go.)
Die Ereignisse wurden bereits 1938 von Tätern, Augenzeugen und Betroffenen sehr verschieden bezeichnet. Seit ihrem 50. Jahrestag 1988 wurde der verbreitete Ausdruck „(Reichs-)Kristallnacht“ zunehmend problematisiert. Die Debatte um die angemessene Bezeichnung ist offen.
Die in die Konzentrationslager verschleppten Opfer sprachen von der „Rath-Aktion“ oder der „Mordwoche“. Victor Klemperer schrieb in sein Tagebuch von der „Grünspan-Affäre“. Walter Tausk fühlte sich an die „Bartholomäusnacht“ erinnert. Viele Augenzeugen der Pogrome erinnerten sich an damals umlaufende Ausdrücke wie „Glasnacht“, „Gläserner Donnerstag“ und „Kristallnacht“, die auf die an diesem Tag zersplitterten Fensterscheiben jüdischer Häuser anspielten. Diese Bezeichnungen scheinen aber nur mündlich tradiert worden zu sein, denn schriftliche Belege für Kristallnacht aus der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus gibt es keine, für Reichskristallnacht nur einen: Der Ministerialdirektor im Reichsarbeitsministerium Wilhelm Börger spottete am 24. Juni 1939 in einer Rede auf dem Gautag des NSDAP-Gaus Hannover-Ost in Lüneburg unter dem Gelächter seiner Zuhörer: „Also die Sache geht als Reichskristallnacht in die Geschichte ein […], Sie sehn, das ist humoristisch erhoben, nicht wahr“. Die Zeitungen der Exil-SPD und der Untergrund-KPD nannten die Ereignisse „Judenpogrome“.
Täter der SA und HJ sprachen wie beim Röhm-Putsch von einer „Nacht der langen Messer“. Diesen Ausdruck hörten Opfer als Gerücht über eine ihnen bevorstehende Racheaktion schon im Vorfeld. Die Dienststellen des NS-Regimes und die vom Reichspropagandaministerium gelenkten Medien benutzten Propagandaausdrücke wie „Judenaktion“, „Novemberaktion“, „Vergeltungsaktion“ oder „Sonderaktion“. Die angeordneten Versammlungen des Folgetages nannten sie „antijüdische Demonstrationen“ oder „gerechte Vergeltungskundgebungen“.
„Reichskristallnacht“ war jedoch anfangs kein staatliches Propagandawort. Wahrscheinlich prägte der Berliner Volksmund die Wortschöpfung „Kristallnacht“ angesichts der vielen zerbrochenen Fenster und Kristallleuchter der Synagogen und Geschäfte. Der Ausdruck „Reichskristallnacht“ wandte sich dann gegen die damaligen Machthaber, indem er ihren inflationären Gebrauch der Vorsilbe „Reichs-“ satirisch verspottete. Diese regimekritische Bedeutung ist nicht schriftlich belegt, wurde später aber von Zeitzeugen bestätigt. Adolf Arndt (SPD), der im November 1938 in Berlin als Rechtsanwalt tätig war, sagte in der Verjährungsdebatte des Deutschen Bundestages vom 10. März 1965:
„[…] den 8./9. November 1938, den man doch nicht, Herr Bundesjustizminister, als ‚sogenannte Reichskristallnacht‘ bezeichnen sollte. Das ist ein blutiger Berliner Witz gewesen, weil man sich damals nicht anders zu helfen wusste.“
Demnach versuchten ohnmächtige Zeitzeugen damit wenigstens privat ihre innere Empörung in grimmiger, sarkastischer Form zu äußern. Erst als der Ausdruck in der NSDAP bekannt wurde, deuteten Parteimitglieder ihn zynisch um. So sagte der Funktionär Wilhelm Börger im Juni 1939 auf dem Gautag der NSDAP in Lüneburg: „Die Sache geht als Reichskristallnacht in die Geschichte ein (Beifall, Gelächter).“ Der Begriff wurde also schon kurz nach seinem Entstehen von den Tätern vereinnahmt, sodass die ursprünglich gemeinte bitter-ironische Distanz gegenüber dem Staatsterror und dessen ideologischer Bemäntelung verloren ging. Nach Herbert Obenaus war es die amtliche und bewusst verharmlosende Bezeichnung für den Pogrom. Auch Bensoussan et al. halten „Kristallnacht“ für eine „euphemistische“ Bezeichnung der „Nazipropaganda“.
In Texten der ersten Nachkriegsjahre finden sich Ausdrücke wie „Judennacht“, „Kristallnacht“, „Novemberpogrom“, „Novembernacht“, „Pogromnacht“, „Tag der (deutschen) Scherbe“, „Reichsscherbenwoche“, „Reichskristalltag“, „(Reichs-)Kristallwoche“, „Reichstrümmertag“, „Synagogenbrand“, „Synagogensturm“, „Synagogenstürmernacht“, „Verfolgungswoche“.
In der DDR wurden die Ereignisse in der Regel „faschistische Pogromnacht“ genannt. In der Bundesrepublik setzten sich „Kristallnacht“ (Brockhaus 1952) und „Reichskristallnacht“ durch. Diese werden bis heute sowohl umgangssprachlich als auch lexikalisch verwendet, auch in anderen Ländern und unter Historikern, jedoch meist mit kritischer Distanz, angedeutet durch Anführungszeichen.
Da der Ausdruck widersprüchliche Mitbedeutungen anklingen lässt, die nur Kenner seiner Entstehung verstehen, stieß er schon früh besonders bei den Opfernachfahren auf Kritik und Ablehnung. So befürchtete die „Notgemeinschaft der durch die Nürnberger Gesetze Betroffenen“ am zehnten Jahrestag 1948:
„Ehe es soweit ist, dass sich dieses falsche Wort im allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch so eingebürgert hat, dass es nicht mehr wegzubringen ist, möchten wir darauf hinweisen, welche Entstellung mit der Benutzung dieses Wortes verbunden ist. Das Wort ‚Kristallnacht‘ ist nicht von den früher Verfolgten erdacht und in den Sprachgebrauch gebracht worden.“
Dennoch wurde der Ausdruck öffentlich und fachlich üblich, weil er die unausgesprochenen Widersprüche griffig zusammenfasste:
„Reichs-“ als Hinweis auf das propagandistisch bemäntelte Regierungsverbrechen, das alle Bürger einbezog,
„Kristall-“ als ironische Beschönigung für die Zerstörung von menschlichem Glück, Leben, Eigentum, Miteinander,
„Nacht“ als Metapher für die politische Finsternis, die sich bis 1945 fortsetzte und ins Ungeheure steigerte.
Seit 1988 intensivierte sich die Bezeichnungsdebatte. Entstehung und regimekritischer Sinn des Ausdrucks „Reichskristallnacht“ wurden weithin vergessen. Er wirkte nur noch zynisch gegenüber den menschlichen Opfern und Überlebenden, als seien damals nur Fensterscheiben zu Bruch gegangen. So verlangte etwa Avraham Barkai 1988, die Bezeichnung müsse aus der Geschichtsschreibung verschwinden, weil sie böswillig-verharmlosend sei und Assoziationen an ein Fest erwecke.
Heute wird die Bezeichnung Kristallnacht als euphemistisch empfunden. Die Alternativbegriffe sind laut dem Germanisten Ole Löding aber ebenfalls problematisch. Die seit der Mitte der 1980er Jahre von Politik und Medien öfter verwendete Bezeichnung Reichspogromnacht fördert Kritikern zufolge die notwendige Vergangenheitsbewältigung nicht, sondern täuscht sie eher als erledigt vor. Dass die Umbenennung nur im deutschen Sprachraum stattfand, könne den Austausch mit anderssprachiger Forschung und ausländischer Literatur erschweren. Die Bezeichnung als „Pogrom“ stellt die Aktionen lokalen und regionalen Massakern an Juden seit dem Mittelalter an die Seite, erfasst aber nicht ihre Organisation durch eine Staatsregierung für ein ganzes Staatsgebiet, die eine landesweite Enteignungs-, Deportations- und Vernichtungspolitik einleitete. Dies kann dazu beitragen, den Holocaust zu verharmlosen. Zudem undifferenziert auf das Reich abhebe, als ob es vom mittelalterlichen Heiligen Römischen Reich bis zum Dritten Reich eine Kontinuität gäbe. Immerhin deute er mit dem metaphorischen Wortbestandteil Nacht die Verdunkelung von Menschlichkeit und Vernunft an. Zudem stellt die Vorsilbe Reichs-, die sich in zahlreichen Wendungen der Zeit finde, nach Wolfgang Benz „eine nachträgliche Referenz an die Sprache des Unmenschen“ dar. Die Bezeichnung Reichspogromnacht sei unhistorisch und verhöhne unbeabsichtigt die Opfer.
Einige neuere historische Untersuchungen bevorzugen deshalb die Bezeichnung „Novemberpogrom(e)“. Sie soll emotionale Assoziationen vermeiden und so einen sachlichen Rückblick auf das Geschehen fördern. Monatsangabe und Plural deuten die längere Dauer der Ausschreitungen und der folgenden KZ-Inhaftierungen an. Sie gilt als die am wenigsten problematische Bezeichnung. Gleichwohl wird Reichskristallnacht weiterhin gebraucht. Der Politologe Harald Schmid wies auf die Dialektik des Begriffs hin: Er sei einerseits als internationales Fachwort für Historiker unaufgebbar, andererseits verbiete sich eine distanzlose Übernahme wegen der komplexen Mitbedeutungen. Harald Schmid folgerte daraus:
„Doch das Wort bleibt auch ein nützlicher sprachlicher Stolperstein. Denn die scheinbar bloß etymologische und semantische Kontroverse führt geradewegs zum Gespräch über die ganze NS-Vergangenheit, den kritischen Umgang mit ihr und das Bemühen um moralische Genauigkeit – auch in der heutigen Benennung politischer Verbrechen.“
In my opinion, Wikipedia is not to far off here, albeit incomplete, and sometimes to “neutral”.
Thank you for the link. I can read the German, but it’s a good resource for others to explore.
this also seems to be the case with the fact that the president is a broke and completely incompetent business man. there is insufficient evidence to the contrary. maybe if he released his taxes and opened all his books for review we could judge for sure. but until then… we have to assume he’s a complete loser.
is that how this game works?
February 3, 2021 (Wednesday)
While Republican lawmakers continue to grab headlines with outrageous behavior and obstructionism, President Biden has been derailing them in the only way no one has tried yet: ignoring them and governing. Only two weeks into his administration, this approach appears to be enormously effective.
The two Republican factions continue to compete for control of the party. That struggle has been personified this week by the relative standing of new Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and established Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, the House Republican Conference Chair, who is the third person in the line of Republican House leadership.
In her two weeks in Congress, Greene has made the news with her support for the extremist QAnon movement, harassment of school shooting survivor David Hogg, and past support for executing Democratic politicians, among other things. After news emerged that she had agreed with a Facebook commenter that the 2018 Parkland school shooting was a “false flag” operation, Democrats were outraged that Republican leadership assigned her to the House Education and Labor Committee. They demanded House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy strip her of committee assignments.
Meanwhile, Cheney has won the ire of pro-Trump Republicans by voting to impeach the former president for instigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump’s supporters, including Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), want to strip Cheney of her leadership role in the party, and Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) traveled to her home state of Wyoming to urge voters to turn her out of office. Still, some observers think the Trump faction is attacking Cheney simply to provide the kind of sound bites that will please their voters.
Today, McCarthy said he would not punish Greene for her statements, and the Republicans on the House Rules Committee said they would not strip her of committee assignments (although McCarthy stripped former Representative Steven King [R-IA] of his assignments after racist comments). Later, when the House Republicans met for the first time this session, about half of them gave Greene a standing ovation when she rose to speak.
Thrilled at the attention she is getting, Greene told the Washington Examiner that there is no difference between establishment Republicans and the Democrats, and she is eager to bring more action-oriented people like her to Congress to help Trump with his plan, “whenever he comes out with [it.]”
And yet, at the same meeting, when party members held a secret vote on leaving Cheney in her leadership position after she voted to impeach Trump, they did so, by a vote of 145-61-1. Increasing numbers of Republicans—including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—are eager to put daylight between themselves and the Trump wing, likely because they know that the political and legal calculus has changed now that the Democrats are in power.
Biden continues to put the government on firm footing. He came into office with a series of executive actions at hand to do exactly what he promised during the campaign: combat the coronavirus pandemic and bolster the weakening economy.
To that end, he is moving forward quickly with a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Today, the Democratic Congress took steps to prepare the way to pass the measure without Republican votes if necessary, although Biden met yesterday with ten Republican senators and says he is willing to talk with Republicans if they are serious. What he refuses to do, though, is what tripped up President Barack Obama, who negotiated with Republicans for months over the Affordable Care Act, only to have all but one of them refuse to vote for the measure.
Biden has also launched a sweeping set of plans to combat climate change—including today calling on Congress to end the $40 billion taxpayer subsidies to fossil fuels-- bringing a wide range of interests behind the plans.
The new administration has also reestablished norms. Yesterday, for example, the Senate confirmed Alejandro Mayorkas as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. This is a big deal because it gives DHS an actual Senate-confirmed head, which it has not had since at least 2019 as Trump appointed various acting heads, including Chad Wolf. According to the Government Accountability Office and a number of judges, Wolf was in the office illegally.
Biden has also reinstituted the oversight that was largely ignored by the previous administration. Today, Robert Stewart Jr., who won more than $38 million in federal contracts to deliver N95 masks despite the fact he had none and had no way of getting any, pleaded guilty to three counts of making false statements, wire fraud, and theft of government funds. Also today, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced the hiring of a number of officials who will be part of a crackdown on enforcement of tax laws both at home and abroad; the Internal Revenue Service estimates that about $441 billion a year in taxes owed are not collected.
Also today, in his first interview since taking office, Biden promised that none of his family members will work at the White House.
Biden has moved quickly to get rid of the political appointees Trump tried to burrow into the federal government. Yesterday, Biden fired all ten of the anti-labor activists Trump had put on the Federal Service Impasses Panel, the panel in charge of resolving disputes between unions and federal agencies when they cannot resolve issues in negotiations. The head of the union of federal employees, representing 700,000 federal employees, thanked Biden for his attempt to “restore basic fairness for federal workers.” He said, “The outgoing panel, appointed by the previous administration and stacked with transparently biased union-busters, was notorious for ignoring the law to gut workplace rights and further an extreme political agenda.”
The two themes of Republican factionalism and the Democrats’ return to American norms came together today. After negotiating for weeks, McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) finally came up with a plan to organize the Senate, which will turn the chairs of committees over to the Democrats.
This means that Biden’s pick for attorney general, Merrick Garland, should finally get a hearing for his confirmation. The attorney general is a leading figure in our national security apparatus, overseeing our legal system as well as the FBI. Former Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was slow walking a hearing for him, but as soon as Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) takes the gavel, Garland will be on the schedule.
If he is confirmed, Garland will oversee the prosecution of those involved in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Garland is known as a straight shooter who will uphold the law impartially.
Today, Reuters broke the news that the Justice Department is considering charging those engaged in the Capitol riot under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). RICO cases are complicated and take a long time to put together, but the law was designed to enable prosecutors to reach those, like criminal ringleaders, who keep their own hands clean but tell others to commit crimes.
If the Department of Justice is indeed considering RICO, which sweeps in a wide range of participants in a crime, Republicans not associated with the attack on the Capitol might have good reason to back away from those who are.
February 4, 2021 (Thursday)
Today Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) proposed giving at least $3000 annually per child to American families. This suggestion is coming from a man who, when he ran as the Republican candidate for president in 2012, famously echoed what was then Republican orthodoxy. He was caught on tape saying that “there are 47 percent of the people who… are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”
Romney’s proposal indicates the political tide has turned away from the Republicans. Since the 1980s, they have insisted that the government must be starved, dismissing as “socialism” Democrats’ conviction that the government has a role to play in stabilizing the economy and society.
And yet, that idea, which is in line with traditional conservatism, was part of the founding ideology of the Republican Party in the 1850s. It was also the governing ideology of Romney’s father, George Romney, who served as governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, where he oversaw the state’s first income tax, and as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Richard Nixon, where he tried to increase housing for the poor and desegregate the suburbs. It was also at the heart of Romney’s own record in Massachusetts, where as governor from 2003 to 2007, he ushered in the near-universal health care system on which the Affordable Care Act was based.
But in the 1990s, Republican leadership purged from the party any lawmakers who embraced traditional Republicanism, demanding absolute loyalty to the idea of cutting taxes and government to free up individual enterprise. By 2012, Romney had to run from his record, including his major health care victory in Massachusetts. Now, just a decade later, he has returned to the ideas behind it.
Why?
First, and most important, President Joe Biden has hit the ground running, establishing a momentum that looks much like that of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt had behind him stronger majorities than Biden’s, but both took office facing economic crises—and, in Biden’s case, a pandemic as well, along with the climate crisis–and set out immediately to address them.
Like FDR, Biden has established the direction of his administration through executive actions: he is just behind FDR’s cracking pace. Biden arrived in the Oval Office with a sheaf of carefully crafted executive actions that put in place policies that voters wanted: spurring job creation, feeding children, rejoining the World Health Organization, pursuing tax cheats, ending the transgender ban in the military, and reestablishing ties to the nation’s traditional allies. Once Biden had a Democratic Senate as well as a House—those two Georgia Senate seats were huge—he was free to ask for a big relief package for those suffering in the pandemic, and now even Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who had expressed concern about the package, seems to be on board.
FDR’s momentum increased in part because the Republicans were discredited after the collapse of the economy and as Republican leaders turned up as corrupt. Biden’s momentum, too, is likely gathering steam as the Republicans are increasingly tainted by their association with the January 6 insurrection and the attack on the Capitol, along with the behavior of those who continue to support the former president.
The former president’s own behavior is not helping to polish his image. In their response to the House impeachment brief, Trump’s lawyers made the mistake of focusing not on whether the Senate can try a former president but on what Trump did and did not do. That, of course, makes Trump a witness, and today Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the lead impeachment manager, asked him to testify.
Trumps’ lawyers promptly refused but, evidently anticipating his refusal, Raskin had noted in the invitation that “[i]f you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021.” In other words: “Despite his lawyers’ rhetoric, any official accused of inciting armed violence against the government of the United States should welcome the chance to testify openly and honestly—that is, if the official had a defense."
The lack of defense seems to be mounting. This morning, Jason Stanley of Just Security called attention to the film shown at the January 6 rally just after Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani spoke. Stanley explained how it was an explicitly fascist film, designed to show the former president as a strong fascist leader promising to protect Americans against those who are undermining the country: the Jews. Stanley also pointed out that, according to the New York Times, the rally was “a White House production” and that Trump was deeply involved with the details.
Trump’s supporters are not cutting a good figure, either. Today, by a vote of 230-199, the House of Representatives voted to strip new Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her assignments to the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee. It did so after reviewing social media posts in which she embraced political violence and conspiracy theories. This leaves Greene with little to do but to continue to try to gin up media attention and to raise money.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had declined to take action against Greene—although in 2019 he stripped assignments from Steve King (R-IA) for racist comments-- and only eleven Republicans joined the majority. The Republican Party is increasingly associated with the Trump wing, and that association will undoubtedly grow as Democrats press it in advertisements, as they have already begun to do.
McConnell has called for the party’s extremists to be purged out of concern that voters are turning away from the party. Still, the struggle between the two factions might be hard to keep out of the news as the Senate turns to confirmation hearings for Biden’s nominee to head the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland.
Going forward, the attorney general will be responsible for overseeing any prosecutions that come from the attempt to overturn the election, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will question Garland, has on it three Republican senators involved in that attempt. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been accused by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of calling before Trump did to get him to alter the state’s vote count. Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) both joined in challenging the counting of the electoral votes.
It is hard to imagine the other senators at the hearing will not bring the three compromised senators into the discussion. The Republicans have so far refused to schedule Garland’s hearing, although now that the Senate is organized under the Democrats, it will happen soon.
Trump Republicans are betting the former president’s endorsement will win them office in the future. But with social media platforms cracking down on his disinformation, his ability to reach voters is not at all what it used to be, making it easier for members of the other faction to jump ship.
In addition, those echoing Trump’s lies are getting hit in their wallets. Today, the voting systems company Smartmatic sued the Fox News Channel and its personalities Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, along with Giuliani and Trump’s legal advisor Sidney Powell, for at least $2.7 billion in damages for lying about Smartmatic machines in their attempt to overturn the election results.
Republicans rejecting the Trump takeover of the party are increasingly outspoken. Not only has Romney called for a measure that echoes Biden’s emphasis on supporting children and families, but also Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) today released a video attacking the leaders of his state’s Republican Party after hearing that they planned to censure him for speaking out against the former president.
“If that president were a Democrat, we both know how you’d respond. But, because he had ‘Republican’ behind his name, you’re defending him,” Sasse said. “Something has definitely changed over the last four years … but it’s not me.”
Ah, flashbacks to the Obama years. Good times…
But seriously, fuck them. Let them destroy themselves if that’s what they want, but with the Trumpist wing seeming to be the strongest, I do somewhat fear what might arise from the ashes.
This has been worrying me lately. Part of restoring confidence in government is not just to punish those who are trying to destroy it, but also to take away the tools they’ve created or used to do it. The GOP has not given up, because they are continuing attempts to restrict voting, affect elections, and strip executive power (or majority rule) in multiple states. To date, how many GOP enablers/supporters behind the election result challenges have been removed from office? The only ones I’ve noticed had positions or membership in the party - they were not elected officials.
Add to this the movements to censure or remove Republican officials who actually did their jobs during the recent election and I think you see where it is going. I know I sound like a broken record, but we need to focus on local elections as much as federal ones. That is where to power ultimately resides, as the rightwing figured out back in the 90’s.
Say it with me, Merrick: Civil Asset Forfeiture.
Imagine those two words together! 
Paging @anon61221983 for the fact. #popularhistorians around here …
