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WASHINGTON The first time someone approached Rep. Mike Simpson with the idea of breaching dams on the Snake River to save Idahos salmon, he started laughing.

I thought, thats just crazy, Simpson recalled. I said at the time, You need to do everything you can to try to restore salmon runs, every alternative, before you look at taking out dams.

That was about 25 years ago, when the Republican lawmaker was serving as speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives. Over the more than two decades since he was elected to represent the eastern half of the state in Congress, Simpson gradually came to what he describes as a clear-eyed conclusion.

The reality, he said in an interview with The Spokesman-Review, is weve tried everything else.

After three years and more than 300 meetings with stakeholders in the region, Simpson unveiled a proposal Feb. 6 to end the decadeslong salmon wars between tribes, farmers, conservationists, businesses and electric utilities over the fish and the dams that threaten their continued existence.

While reactions from the regions congressional Democrats have so far been lukewarm with key senators calling for more deliberation Simpson insists there is no time for further delay.

In a curious set of political circumstances, the veteran GOP lawmaker is planning to hitch his wagon to a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure package President Joe Biden and his allies plan to move forward in a matter of weeks.

Simpsons plan clearly banks on a big federal infrastructure package, said Justin Hayes, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League. The region has gotten together and talked about this for years, but the region has never had the resources to do this. Never has the region said, Lets go find $33.5 billion.

Simpsons proposal outlines $33.5 billion in federal spending to breach four dams on the lower Snake River in 2030 removing earthen berms to restore the rivers flow and to replace the transportation, irrigation and power generation the dams provide.

Its the first proposal that looks at the big picture, Simpson said. Not just the question of take dams out or dont take dams out, but if you take dams out, what are the consequences? Were the first to admit those dams are valuable, and so if youre going to take them out, how are you going to make the stakeholders whole?

Dam power: Snake River dams are not big power producers, but play an important regional roleAfter nearly two decades of politicking, controversy and dispute, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the Cascade Locks on the Columbia River, near The Dalles, Oregon, allowing boats laden with goods to pass by once unnavigable rapids. | Read more

Other provisions in his plan would give agriculture a bigger role in watershed improvement and transfer fish management responsibility from the Bonneville Power Administration to a joint council of states and tribes.

The remaining major dams in the Columbia River Basin would get license extensions of 35 to 50 years, along with a 35-year moratorium on lawsuits related to the dams. Simpson cites $17 billion from taxpayers and BPA ratepayers spent on fish recovery efforts since Idahos salmon and steelhead were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1991.

A judge cant order you to take the dams out only Congress can do that, Simpson said. But the reality is a judge can make it so damned expensive to keep the dams that the only alternative is to remove them.

After a federal study recommended against breaching the four lower Snake River dams last year, a coalition of environmental and fishing groups went to court in January to ask a judge to intervene.

Four dams on the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border are slated for removal after years of litigation over dwindling salmon runs. Pointing to the lack of compensation for those on the losing side of that legal fight, Simpson said his plan aims to ensure a fair resolution for all the regions stakeholders.

In addition to keeping those stakeholders whole, a fundamental part of Simpsons plan is a recognition of what the dams already have taken from tribes throughout the Columbia Basin.

The impacts of the dams as a whole have affected our people economically, culturally, spiritually and physically as well, said Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe.

Wheeler said the Nimiipuu people the members of the Nez Perce Tribe traditionally followed the salmon runs upstream, relying on the fish for food and developing their culture around the seasonal migration.

In the 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla, they ceded most of their land to the United States in exchange for the exclusive right of taking fish in the streams running through and bordering the Nez Perce Reservation.

If you look throughout history, Simpson said, the United States has not always kept its treaty obligations with tribes. In fact, you could say we rarely have kept our treaty obligations. One of the treaty obligations we have with tribes is to maintain the fishing rights that they have. You cant do that if you dont have fish.

Wheeler points to Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution known as the Supremacy Clause which stipulates that treaties shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby.

We made a bargain, Wheeler said. It secured our way of life and granted the United States rights in our areas, and thats enshrined in the Constitution. Were confident that we would be successful in court, but we would rather have this issue solved by everyone thats involved in it.

Other tribes in the region have hailed Simpsons proposal, including the Spokane and Shoshone-Bannock tribes and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Yakama Nation and Umatilla Reservation. Conservationist and fishing groups have similarly welcomed it, but so far Simpson hasnt received the support from other members of Congress he will likely need for his plan to succeed.

In a joint statement released Feb. 5, a day before Simpson even unveiled his plan, GOP Reps. Russ Fulcher of Idaho and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington endorsed the regions hydroelectric dams and issued a dire warning.

The hydropower developed in the Pacific Northwest benefits every resident, family, and business in our region, the Republicans wrote. The clean, renewable power generated by the dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers supplies half of the Pacific Northwests energy and is critical for a reliable power grid. Without it, life as we know it in our region would cease to exist.

Simpson is quick to point out his plan aims to shore up the bulk of the regions hydropower generation, ensuring the most productive dams continue to operate. The four lower Snake River dams together generate less than one-tenth of the Columbia Basin dams power output, and dam-breaching proponents argue the electricity they generate is getting increasingly costly relative to other energy sources.

Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said he has been hearing from farmers, ranchers and other Idahoans who staunchly oppose Simpsons proposal.

To his credit, Simpson has said that he doesnt know if doing this is going to save the salmon, Risch said in an interview. Im not chiding Congressman Simpson for doing this. Hes doing it in good faith. He strongly, strongly believes he wants to save the salmon, and I think we all do.

But if youre going to do that, what you really ought to do is pursue something where you can stand up, beat your chest and say, Look, do this with me and were going to save the salmon. And he starts off from the proposition that, yeah, theres a lot of pain here, but it still might not save the salmon.

Risch also questioned the lack of specifics in Simpsons plan for replacing the power generated by the four dams. In the proposal, a section on energy replacement lists three possibilities: 1. BPA owns and operates the firm power replacement; 2. A third-party Northwest entity owns and operates the replacement power; 3. Other Ideas?

Simpson said his concept is open-ended by design. Im open to anything, but give me some idea of what you would do that we havent already tried.

Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has expressed skepticism while welcoming Simpsons proposal as a catalyst for ongoing regional talks over saving anadromous fish like salmon and steelhead. As the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, the Idaho senator could play a key role in deciding what ends up in the infrastructure package.

I commend Mike for trying to bring people to the table to discuss this and find these solutions, Crapo told Idaho radio host Neal Larson on Feb. 24. But we havent got that kind of consensus yet. I think that we should use Mikes suggestion here to jump-start and maybe give some additional fuel to the efforts to build that kind of collaborative solution.

Simpson said all he asks is that his fellow Northwest lawmakers read his whole proposal before forming an opinion.

I knew when we did it that there would be the hell no people, he said, and there would be people who think that they had reached nirvana and this was the solution to everything. Its neither of those things. Its a compromise that we think will save salmon and make the stakeholders whole.

In response to Simpsons proposal, four Democratic senators who will play key roles in crafting the infrastructure package Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington, and Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon released a joint statement calling for a measured approach.

All communities in the Columbia River Basin and beyond should be heard in efforts to recover the Northwests iconic salmon runs while ensuring economic vitality of the region, the senators wrote. Any process needs to balance the needs of communities in the Columbia River Basin, be transparent, be driven by stakeholders, and follow the science.

The question of whether to breach the Snake River dams has been a top political issue in Eastern Washington for decades. In that time, Murray and Cantwell have never supported breaching dams. But theyve also faced intense criticism from Republicans for never ruling out the possibility.

Spokespeople for Cantwell, Murray and Wyden declined to elaborate on the joint statement. Merkley spokeswoman Sara Hottman said the Oregon Democrats initial reaction was that its the first serious effort hes seen to look at all of the effects in this massively complicated issue, so hes having his team look at it.

Sen. Merkley has compared his immersion in the effort to remove four Klamath River dams to removal of the Snake River dams, Hottman wrote in an email. With the Klamath dams, the impacts are modest, but its still been incredibly difficult to move forward. The Snake River dams, however, have massive impacts on transportation, power, flood control, recreation, etc.

Simpsons plan drew more praise from Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, who said in a Feb. 9 statement his state welcomes Rep. Simpsons willingness to think boldly about how to recover Columbia and Snake River salmon in a way that works for the entire region and invests at a potentially transformative level in clean energy, transportation and agriculture.

Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon, also a Democrat, said in a Feb. 8 statement Simpsons proposal will help us to build on the economic opportunities of the Columbia Basin and invest in a clean energy future.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, said in a Feb. 18 statement breaching the dams is not a silver bullet for salmon recovery and would have devastating impacts on Idahoans and vital segments of Idahos economy.

All three governors pointed to an October 2020 agreement between Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana to define a future collaborative framework to rebuild salmon and steelhead stocks, but Simpson said the time for those plodding deliberations has passed.

Weve been debating this for 25 years, he said. I would like to think we could discuss this for the next two or three years, but I dont think salmon have that much time.

The key to Simpsons plan for swifter action is the infrastructure package the White House has dubbed the Build Back Better plan, borrowing a Biden campaign slogan.

After the president met with Republican and Democratic lawmakers about the plan on Thursday, Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, said Biden is very, very set on getting it done, and getting it done pretty damn soon.

Pressed by reporters, DeFazio said he plans to have the bill ready for a vote in the House in May.

Biden has said he wants Congress to craft a bipartisan infrastructure package, but prospects for wide GOP support are grim. Democrats see the legislation as a chance to enact Bidens campaign promise of a massive investment to create jobs in clean energy industries.

Before the meeting, DeFazio told CNBC he would propose splitting the legislation in two, with one bill designed to attract GOP support for specific infrastructure projects and another to appropriate trillions to pay for them, which Republicans are unlikely to back.

The White House has so far declined to say how expensive the infrastructure package will be, but Simpson said he has heard rumors of $2 to $3 trillion. Even at the low end of that range, he pointed out, his $33.5 billion proposal would account for less than 2% of the total cost.

I dont think thats too much to ask for the Pacific Northwest, he said.

The second part of DeFazios plan would require Senate Democrats to use a process called budget reconciliation, which would allow them to pass the spending bill with just 51 all-Democratic votes rather than the bipartisan 60-vote majority required to pass most legislation in the Senate.

Asked how he feels about the prospect of funding his proposal through a Senate process likely to have no Republican support, Simpson said, Well, you gotta do what you gotta do. Its important to me, I think its important to the Pacific Northwest, and its important to my district, thats for sure.

While Simpsons proposal had been in the works for years, he saw an opening when Democrats gained a narrow majority in the Senate after two unlikely victories in Georgias runoff election in January. While budget bills take shape in the House, a GOP-controlled Senate would have been likely to block most of Bidens spending priorities.

Several Northwest lawmakers are also in key positions. In addition to DeFazios lead role in crafting the infrastructure package, Cantwell chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Wyden and Crapo are the top Democrat and Republican, respectively, on the Senate Finance Committee, and Murray is the third-ranking member of Senate Democratic leadership.

The stars are kind of aligning, Simpson said. Were probably stronger as a Pacific Northwest delegation than weve ever been.

Simpson said he will work to make sure the funding for his proposal gets into the House version of the infrastructure package. As the top Republican on the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Energy and Water Development, he is well positioned to do so.

Spokespeople for the four Washington and Oregon senators did not respond directly when asked whether the senators would attempt to block funding for Simpsons plan if it makes its way to the Senate. Despite any misgivings they may have about the aggressive timeline of the Idaho Republicans plan, stripping the funding from the infrastructure bill would draw the ire of tribes and conservationists.

Wheeler said the Nez Perce Tribe is gearing up to start meeting with lawmakers in the coming weeks.

We are at such a critical juncture, we cant let this pass us by, the chairman said. I think if we have forward-looking senators, they can see that this is the future. We have confidence that will happen, because it is the right thing to do.

For his part, Simpson said he is just asking everyone to get past their first impressions of his proposal and think outside the box.

Think about not just what we currently do, but what do we want the Pacific Northwest to look like in 20 or 30 or 50 years? he said. Everything we do on the lower Snake and Columbia rivers we can do differently. Its our choice. Salmon need a river. They dont have a choice, and right now they dont have a river.

The lower Snake River is not a river anymore, it is just a series of pools that are ever-warming, that endanger the salmon, and theyre going to go extinct if we dont do something. To some people, thats OK. Its not to me.

Orion Donovan-Smith's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is funded in part by Report for America and by members of the Spokane community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspapers managing editor.

More here:
Fate of Republican Mike Simpson's plan to remove Snake River dams lies with Democrats and Biden infrastructure package - The Spokesman-Review

The seven Republican senators who broke ranks by voting to convict former president Donald Trump at his impeachment trial faced immediate hostility and criticism from fellow conservatives revealing the potentially high cost of opposing Trumpism within the party.

These senators North Carolinas Richard Burr, Louisianas Bill Cassidy, Maines Susan Collins, Alaskas Lisa Murkowski, Utahs Mitt Romney, Nebraskas Ben Sasse, and Pennsylvanias Pat Toomey brought the total number of guilty votes to 57. That was not nearly enough to secure a conviction, but easily enough to ensure instant attack from fellow Republicans and others on the right.

The reaction was a powerful illustration of the strength of Trumps grip on the Republican party even though he is out of office.

Lets impeach RINOs from the Republican Party!!! Trumps son and conservative favorite Donald Trump Jr said on Twitter, using the insulting acronym for Republicans In Name Only.

The instant backlash came from powerful rightwing media figures also.

Conservative Fox News host Laura Ingraham commented: Prediction: none of the Republicans who voted in the affirmative today will speak at the 2024 GOP convention.

For Cassidy, there was almost instant retribution in his own state. Jeff Landry, the Republican attorney general of Louisiana, tweeted: Senator Bill Cassidys vote is extremely disappointing.

The local party agreed and its executive committee unanimously voted to censure Cassidy for his vote. We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the vote today by Sen. Cassidy to convict former President Trump. Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed and President Trump has been acquitted of the impeachment charge filed against him, the Republican party of Louisiana similarly said in a statement.

Cassidy was not alone, as Burrs state party in North Carolina also went immediately on the attack.

Michael Whatley, North Carolina Republican party chair, condemned his colleague in a statement, saying: North Carolina Republicans sent Senator Burr to the United States Senate to uphold the Constitution and his vote today to convict in a trial that he declared unconstitutional is shocking and disappointing.

Even Republicans who voted to acquit Trump were not necessarily spared from conservative backlash, including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. The lawmaker said that he voted to acquit over a jurisdictional issue and because Trump was no longer in office, McConnell didnt think impeachment was in its purview.

However, McConnell also firmly criticized Trump following the acquittal, saying: Theres no question, none, that President Trump is practically, and morally, responsible for provoking the events of the day and that hes still liable for everything he did while hes in office. He didnt get away with anything yet.

Trumps circle was displeased at the lack of fealty, despite the vote to acquit.

If only McConnell was so righteous as the Democrats trampled Trump and the Republicans while pushing Russia collusion bullshit for three years or while Dems incited 10 months of violence, arson and rioting. Yet then he just sat back and did jack shit, said Trump Jr.

These attacks come as party-line Republicans have ratcheted up their efforts to unseat dissenting conservatives in upcoming primaries. The 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are already seeing primary opponents trying to unseat them and replace them with Trump loyalists.

Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican congressman and dogged Trump loyalist, even flew to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in late January to hold a rally against senior Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who backed impeachment.

Defeat Liz Cheney in this upcoming election, Gaetz commented, and Wyoming will bring Washington to its knees. How can you call yourself a representative when you dont represent the will of the people?

Gaetz also described Cheney the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney as a Beltway bureaucrat turned fake cow girl that supported an impeachment that is deeply unpopular in the state of Wyoming.

Continue reading here:
Seven Republican rebels who voted to convict feel Trumpists' fury - The Guardian

Sanctioning Trump or Greene offered the party an opportunity to draw a bright line against extremist groups and violence as a means of advancing political goals. But the vast majority of congressional Republicans conspicuously rejected the opportunity to construct such a barrier through their decisions to oppose impeachment or conviction for Trump over his role in the US Capitol attack and to support Greene during the recent Democratic effort to strip her of her committee assignments.

Those choices unfolded against a backdrop of recent polls that found a stunningly high percentage of rank-and-file Republican voters endorsed anti- small-d democratic sentiments, including the belief that "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it."

Voters sympathetic to these conspiracy theories and the use or threat of violence as a political tool, says Daniel Cox, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who supervised the poll, have become "a really important faction that the Republican Party is going to have to address. There is a part of the GOP that is really buying into this stuff."

Through their inactions on Trump and Greene, Republicans "are normalizing, they are mainstreaming, what counterterrorism experts would say is violent extremism: that it is acceptable to use inflammatory rhetoric and encourage violence to achieve your ends and ... it is acceptable to engage in public life through conspiracy theories," says Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary for threat prevention in the Department of Homeland Security for Trump who resigned and opposed his reelection.

That deference inside the GOP "is a sign, a recognition, that this ideology, this belief, this tribalism is the ascendant part of the Republican coalition," says longtime Republican consultant Michael Madrid, who became a staunch Trump critic over the past four years. Elected Republicans bowing to Trump and Greene, he says, "are feeding the beast" of the growing party faction drawn to extremist beliefs and tactics.

"I don't think most of them believe it; but they know that's where the party is at," Madrid adds. "They have fed the monster for so long that even when it turns on them, when the barbarians are literally at the gate ... when they were the targets and they were prey, they still will not turn on it. That's how dangerous is the societal threat that we are facing."

Sympathizing with the rioters

The exact share of the GOP coalition responsive to extremist White nationalist beliefs or the use of violence to advance political goals is impossible to measure precisely. But polling and other research suggests that the best way to think about it may be through concentric circles radiating out from hard-core believers willing to commit violence themselves to a much broader range of GOP voters who might not become violent personally but express sympathy or understanding for those who do.

But polling has found a larger group of Republicans expressing sympathy for the attack on the Capitol -- and a much larger group than that expressing sympathy more generally for the belief that the threats to American society as they define it have grown so great that force or violence is justified to respond to them.

The share of Republican voters who express support for the use of force to advance their political goals in general is considerably larger. In the American Enterprise Institute survey, 55% of Republicans agreed that "we may have to use force to save" the "American way of life." Roughly 4-in-10 agreed with an even more harshly worded proposition: "If elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves even if it requires taking violent actions."

The share of Republicans who "strongly agree" with that sentiment -- about 1 in 8 -- is smaller and may be another measure of the share of the party coalition willing to personally consider violence. But even so, Republican opinion on these questions dramatically stands out from other Americans. Big majorities of Democrats and independents rejected both propositions.

"It's pretty shocking," says Cox, the director of the American Enterprise Institute's Survey Center on American Life. "When you look at those kind of statements, and realize how extreme that they are, it is absolutely concerning that they find a significant amount of support [among Republicans]."

Bullying goes mainstream

The sheer number of Republican voters aligning with all of those beliefs creates a huge headwind for those in the party who want to take a stronger stand against extremism and violence by isolating Greene and castigating Trump for inciting the attack.

"It puts you in a difficult position to say in a full-throated way that this is wrong, and we reject it," says Cox. "That's what people are rightly worried about -- that we need to come to a consensus that certain behaviors are well outside what is acceptable and need to be wholeheartedly rejected." At this point, he adds, within the GOP, "we're not seeing that."

Robert P. Jones, founder and CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, agrees. All these findings about Republican voters' tolerance for violence and conspiracy theories, he says, present "a chilling portrait of how far down the extremist tracks rank-and-file Republicans have gone with Trump."

While "there were numerous opportunities over the last four years for historically mainstream Republicans to throw the switch and find an exit ramp," he adds, the attitudes Trump has solidified in the GOP base now make that much harder. "Trump and Trumpism is now a runaway train that is not going to be easily derailed within the Republican Party," he says.

"They just legitimized a person that used tactics I would say 10 years ago, even five years ago, would have been abhorrent to the Republican Party," Neumann told me. "But President Trump has made bullying a key figure of the Republican Party now, so they know they can't condemn that behavior because they know the base loves it."

The new American Enterprise Institute study underlines his conclusion, according to previously unpublished data provided to CNN. In that survey, a striking three-fourths of Republicans agreed with the statement that discrimination against Whites is now as great a problem in the US as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities. Social scientists view agreement with that question as a measure of denial of the existence of systemic racism in American society.

The big majority of Republicans who consider discrimination against Whites as great a problem as discrimination against minorities were far more likely than those who disagree to endorse anti-democratic ideas. More than three-fifths of those worried about discrimination against Whites agreed that "we may have to use force" to save "the traditional American way of life." Among the Republicans who believe minorities face more discrimination than Whites, nearly three-fourths disagreed with that statement. Nearly half of the Republicans who see widespread bias against Whites say Americans must consider violent action; almost four-fifths of the other Republicans reject that idea.

After the assault on the Capitol, they asked if protesters "went too far ... causing lasting damage at home and abroad" or whether because "the election was stolen ... it's easy to understand why Trump supporters showed up to protest at the U.S. Capitol." Trump supporters split in half on whether the protest was justified when the question noted the charges of fraud "in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia." That result was stunning enough -- but when the political scientists asked the same question while tying the fraud to "urban areas like Philadelphia and Atlanta, predominantly minority communities," the share of Trump supporters who said they could "understand" the invasion shot up to nearly two-thirds.

In all their actions of the past few weeks -- or more precisely the inaction against Trump and Greene -- GOP leaders have signaled their unwillingness or inability to confront those sentiments too forcefully. Blum says that what appears to be happening inside the GOP is "an internal renegotiation that has dramatically changed which coalition members matter." The pre-Trump traditional Republicans are losing influence, she says, while the party is responding to the hard-core Trump voters motivated by a "sense of [cultural] threat, White grievance." It is, she adds, "like George Wallace rose from the grave" and imposed his priorities on the GOP.

These attitudes don't suggest large numbers of Republican voters will pursue violent actions themselves; but, as the past few weeks show, they make it less likely that Republican leaders will clearly excommunicate such extremism.

"Without drawing that bright line, you are ceding your party to this: a party of not living in facts, that bullying is acceptable behavior and that violence is acceptable behavior if you are trying to preserve your 'way of life,' whatever that means," says Neumann. "This will result in more people, especially within the echo chamber they are living in, seeing people that they disagree with as a mortal enemy, which for some small percentage of them translates into 'I have a justification for violence.' "

Madrid, one of the founders of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, agrees. The biggest challenge for the country, he argues, is not "the extremists" themselves but "the enablers" inside the GOP who are creating more oxygen for extremism to gain strength. The GOP's situation, he says, resembles the dynamic in Northern Ireland with the Irish Republican Army during the years of their violent resistance to British rule.

"They would go out and blow things up," Madrid says. "You could ask Irish Catholics who would say, 'I'd never be part of the IRA, but I kind of get what they are doing ... They are on the right side; they've got a point.' And that's where we are already at in the Republican Party, and that's what that polling data suggests."

This tacit acceptance of extremists and violence carries a clear political risk for the GOP: a continued loss of support among racially moderate voters in the white-collar suburbs who already moved steadily away from the party under Trump.

But if conspiracy theorists and other extremists solidify, or even expand, their beachhead in the GOP, the risk for the country could be much greater. The growing racial and religious diversity that triggers the retreat from democratic values among a growing number of GOP voters will only accelerate in the next decade. If the Republican Party does not find more will to explicitly renounce the dark forces circling around Trump, persistent outbursts of White nationalist political violence could be the deadly drumbeat for the years ahead.

"Clearly they think that's where the base is and they can't change it," Neumann told me. "But I would argue we are at a moment where ... if nobody steps up and tries to tell the truth and tries to lead people out of this echo chamber of stolen elections and [the belief that] violence is justified, that is catastrophic for the country. We will not survive as a democracy."

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Is the GOP's extremist wing now too big to fail? - CNN

During the first trial of Donald J. Trump, 13 months ago, the former president commanded near-total fealty from his party. His conservative defenders were ardent and numerous, and Republican votes to convict him for pressuring Ukraine to help him smear Joseph R. Biden Jr. were virtually nonexistent.

In his second trial, Mr. Trump, no longer president, received less ferocious Republican support. His apologists were sparser in number and seemed to lack enthusiasm. Far fewer conservatives defended the substance of his actions, instead dwelling on technical complaints while skirting the issue of his guilt on the charge of inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

And this time, seven Republican senators voted with Democrats to convict Mr. Trump the most bipartisan rebuke ever delivered in an impeachment process. Several others, including Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, intimated that Mr. Trump might deserve to face criminal prosecution.

Mr. McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor after the vote, denounced Mr. Trumps unconscionable behavior and held him responsible for having given inspiration to lawlessness and violence.

Yet Mr. McConnell had joined with the great majority of Republicans just minutes earlier to find Mr. Trump not guilty, leaving the chamber well short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict the former president.

The vote stands as a pivotal moment for the party Mr. Trump molded into a cult of personality, one likely to leave a deep blemish in the historical record. Now that Republicans have passed up an opportunity to banish him through impeachment, it is not clear when or how they might go about transforming their party into something other than a vessel for a semiretired demagogue who was repudiated by a majority of voters.

Defeated by President Biden, stripped of his social-media megaphone, impeached again by the House of Representatives and accused of betraying his oath by a handful of Republican dissenters, Mr. Trump nonetheless remains the dominant force in right-wing politics. Even offline and off camera at his Palm Beach estate, and offering only a feeble impeachment defense through his legal team in Washington, the former president continues to command unmatched admiration from conservative voters.

Indeed, in a statement celebrating the Senate vote on Saturday, Mr. Trump declared that his political movement has only just begun.

The determination of so many Republican lawmakers to discard the mountain of evidence against Mr. Trump including the revelation that he had sided with the rioters in a heated conversation with the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy reflects how thoroughly the party has come to be defined by one man, and how divorced it now appears to be from any deeper set of policy aspirations and ethical or social principles.

After campaigning last year on a message of law and order, most Republican lawmakers decided not to apply those standards to a former commander in chief who made common cause with an organized mob. A party that often proclaimed that Blue lives matter balked at punishing a politician whose enraged supporters had assaulted the Capitol Police. A generations worth of rhetoric about personal responsibility appeared to founder against the perceived imperative of accommodating Mr. Trump.

Lanhee Chen, a Hoover Institution scholar and policy adviser to a number of prominent Republican officials, said the G.O.P. would need to redefine itself as a governing party with ambitions beyond fealty to a single leader.

When the conservative movement, when the Republican Party, have been successful, its been as a party of ideas, Mr. Chen said, lamenting that much of the party was still taking a Trump-first approach.

Many Republicans are more focused on talking about him than about whats next, he said. And thats a very dangerous place to be.

In recent weeks, the party has been so submerged in internal conflict, and so captive to its fear of Mr. Trump, that it has delivered only a halting and partial critique of Mr. Bidens signature initiatives, including his request that Congress spend $1.9 trillion to fight the coronavirus pandemic and revive the economy.

Mr. Trumps tenure as an agent of political chaos is almost certainly not over. The former president and his advisers have already made it plain that they intend to use the 2022 midterm elections as an opportunity to reward allies and mete out revenge to those who crossed Mr. Trump. And hanging over the party is the possibility of another run for the White House in three years.

It remains to be seen how aggressively the partys leadership will seek to counter him. Mr. McConnell has told associates that he intends to wage a national battle in 2022 against far-right candidates and to defend incumbents targeted by Mr. Trump.

But by declining to convict Mr. Trump on Saturday, Mr. McConnell invited skepticism about how willing he might be to wage open war against Mr. Trump on the campaign trail.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ridiculed Mr. McConnell for his ambivalent position after his floor speech, calling his remarks disingenuous and speculating that he had delivered them for the benefit of his financial backers who dislike Mr. Trump.

The vote by Republicans to acquit Mr. Trump, she said in a statement, was among the most dishonorable acts in our nations history.

Only a few senior Republicans have gone so far as to say that it is time for Mr. Trump to lose his lordly status in the party altogether. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the highest-ranking House Republican to support impeachment, said in a recent television interview that Mr. Trump does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward.

Several of the Republican senators who voted for conviction on Saturday thundered against Mr. Trump after he was acquitted, in terms that echoed Ms. Cheneys explanation last month of her own vote to impeach him.

By what he did and did not do, President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, said Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a senior lawmaker who is close to Mr. McConnell.

But the lineup of Republicans who voted for conviction was, on its own, a statement on Mr. Trumps political grip on the G.O.P. Only Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is up for re-election next year, and she has survived grueling attacks from the right before.

The remainder of the group included two lawmakers who are retiring Mr. Burr and Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and three more who just won new terms in November and will not face voters again until the second half of the decade.

More typical of the Republican response was that of Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, a Trump loyalist serving his first term. The trial, he said on Saturday, was merely a political performance aimed at undermining a successful chief executive.

In Washington, a quiet majority of Republican officials appears to be embracing the kind of wishful thinking that guided them throughout Mr. Trumps first campaign in 2016, and then through much of his presidency, insisting that he would soon be marginalized by his own outrageous conduct or that he would lack the discipline to make himself a durable political leader.

Several seemed to be looking to the criminal justice system as a means of sidelining Mr. Trump. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who voted for acquittal, noted in a statement, No president is above the law or immune from criminal prosecution, and that includes former President Trump.

Prosecution may not be a far-fetched scenario, given that Mr. Trump is facing multiple investigations by the local authorities in Georgia and New York into his political and business dealings.

But passing the buck has seldom paid off for Mr. Trumps adversaries, who learned repeatedly that the only sure way to rein him in was to beat him and his legislative proxies at the ballot box. That task has fallen almost entirely to Democrats, who captured the House in 2018 to put a check on Mr. Trump and then ejected him from the White House in November.

Still, Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a longtime Trump ally who has been critical of the former president since the November election, told reporters in the Capitol on Friday that he believed Mr. Trump would be weakened by the impeachment trial, even if the Senate opted not to convict him. (Mr. Cramer, who also called the trial the stupidest week in the Senate, voted for acquittal.)

Hes made it pretty difficult to gain a lot of support, Mr. Cramer said of Mr. Trump. Now, as you can tell, theres some support that will never leave, but I think that is a shrinking population and probably shrinks a little bit after this week.

An even more categorical prognosis came from Ms. Murkowski.

I just dont see how Donald Trump will be re-elected to the presidency again, Ms. Murkowski said.

If that projection seems anchored more in hope than in experience, there are good reasons for Republicans to root for Mr. Trumps exit from the political stage. He is intensely unpopular with a majority of the electorate, and polls consistently found that most Americans wanted to see him convicted.

Even in places where Mr. Trump retains a powerful following, there is a growing recognition that the partys loss of the White House and the Senate in 2020, and the House two years before that, did not come about by accident.

In Georgia, the site of some of the partys most stinging defeats of the 2020 campaign, Jason Shepherd, a candidate for state party chair, said he saw the G.O.P. as grappling with the kind of identity crisis that comes periodically with a loss after youve had a big personality leading the party, likening Mr. Trumps place in the party to that of Ronald Reagan.

Republicans, Mr. Shepherd said, had to find a way to appeal to the voters Mr. Trump brought into their coalition while communicating a message that the G.O.P. is bigger than Donald Trump. But he acknowledged that the next wave of candidates was already looking to the former president as a model.

Republicans are trying to position themselves as the next Donald Trump, he said. Maybe, in terms of personality, a kinder and gentler Donald Trump, but someone who will stand up to the left and fight for conservative principles that do unite Republicans.

Go here to read the rest:
Republican Acquittal of Trump Is a Pivotal Moment for the Party - The New York Times

Tom Nichols, Opinion columnist Published 5:00 a.m. ET Feb. 14, 2021 | Updated 9:17 a.m. ET Feb. 15, 2021

Presidents have been impeached, but none have been removed from office due to impeachment. Confusing? Here's how. USA TODAY

Trump's acquittal proved with final certainty that Republicans are driven only by ambition, comfort and self-interest and the Constitution be damned.

The second Senatetrial of Donald Trump is over. Trump has been acquitted of betraying his oath and his country. He was guilty of these charges, and so is the Republican Party, despite a handful of exceptions in a 57-43 vote that allowed Trump to escape conviction and a permanent ban on holding federal office.

The Democratic House managers did a magnificent job, marshaling elegant rhetoric and ironclad logic far beyond what Trumps obvious guilt required. Their case will stand for years as an example of civic virtue.

Trumps defense team, composed of a personal injury lawyer and a few other nonentities, was incompetent andwhined like Trump himself about Democrat managers and cancel culture. They managed to make ambulance chasing seem noble by comparison.

And none of it mattered. The outcome was foreordained. On a weekend we once reserved for honoring the births of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, so-called constitutionalistslike Sen. Mike Lee of Utah gleefully betrayed everything for which Lincoln lived and for which he was murdered in cold blood. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, barely able to contain his smirking, made the case within minutes of Trumps acquittal that the former president was probably guilty anyway, but hey, maybe someone else can take him to court just somewhere other than the Senate.

It is long past time to put aside rationalizations about ideology and party loyalty and tribalism. The voters back home in these Republican states and districts might be drunk on the vile moonshine brewed by Fox News,One America News Network and other right-wing outfits, but McConnell and the Republican members of Congress are with the obvious exception of kooks like Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado or Marjorie Taylor Greeneof Georgia educated men and women who know better. They know exactly what they are doing and why.

The acquittal of Donald Trump proved, with final certainty, that the Republicans are driven only by ambition,comfort and self-interest and the Constitution be damned.

For all of their complaints about The Swamp, these GOP careerists are creatures of Washington. No matter where they were born, they are now the squires of Northern Virginia and Georgetown and they are not going back. For all their populist bravado about how the elites hate the Real Americans, no one is more elitist and hates Real America including their own constituents as much as the Republicans who will do anything rather than risk being sent home to live among them.

Sens. Ted Cruz, left, and Josh Hawley on Jan. 6, 2021, in the Senate in Washington, D.C.(Photo: OLIVIER DOULIERY, AFP via Getty Images)

Arkansas Sen.Tom Cotton and the Houses dreadfulElise Stefanik, from New York's Adirondacks,did not both go to Harvard just to end up as the mayor of Fayetteville or relegated to a city council in Plattsburgh. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley didnt make it to Stanford and Yale just to hang out a shingle probating wills and handling divorces in Sedalia.

These opportunists will never do anything that might incur even so much as the remote risk of a primary challenge. They have made it and they are staying where they are. Exile from the District of Columbia is not for them. If bending the knee yet one more time to the cult of Trump keeps them motoring along the Rock Creek Parkway while taking in the vista of the Potomac River, it is a price they will gladly pay. And so will all of us pay, too, as democracy settles into trench warfare between a shrinking but powerful claque of ruthless frauds and the rest of America.

Violating their oaths: In Donald Trump v. democracy, acquittal shows depth and danger of Trumpism pandemic

There are a few noble exceptions among the Republicans, but not enough to matter. Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, for one, has said point-blank that he is willing to lose his job if that is the price of telling the truth, and that if it happens, he will be at peace.

But others, such as Sens. Rand Paul (himself the son of a long-serving congressman) or Ted Cruz a man known for his legendary and insufferable ambition since college, and who probably ran for class leader in his newborn ward in the hospital will risk no such sacrifice. They, you see, were bred for better things far from Kentucky and Texas, and if that means allying themselves with the worst and most partisan elements in America rather than with the Constitution, so be it.

The Republicans have repeatedly betrayed both Lincoln and the Union. The party whose first president died as a martyr at the hands of an insurrectionistis now controlled by empty, hollow people who rolled their eyes and lazed their way through the trial of a president who was manifestly guilty of inciting an insurrection.

If nothing else, perhaps this disgusting dishonoring of the memory of our 16th president should persuade the rest of us to bring back the actual Feb. 12 and Feb. 22 birthdays of Presidents Lincoln and Washington as national holidays, so that we do not confuse their heroism and nobility with the cult of personality practiced by modern Republicans.

Acquitted: Shared identity and fear of Trump kept most Republicans in line

Presidents Daywas always a sham.Americans once knew that we should not worship an abstract office we honor the best among us who have sat in that office. It was never sensible to allow, say, both Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt to be feted on the same day. But this final obscenity, this last rebuke to the memory of Lincoln, should inspire us never to allow the chance that Trump is remembered on the same day as the man who saved the Union.

The Republicans who voted to acquit Trump acted with selfishness, cynicismand even malice. They have smeared their betrayal of the Constitution all over their careers the same way the January insurrectionists smeared excrement on the walls of the Congress itself.

At least human waste can be washed away. What the Republicans did on Feb.13, 2021, will never be expunged from the history of the United States.

Tom Nichols,a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors,is the author of Our Own Worst Enemy, coming in August. Follow him on Twitter:@RadioFreeTom

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Republicans who acquitted Trump put their careers over duty, honor and the Constitution - USA TODAY