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The Wall Street Journal: He may run again, but he won’t win another national election

Following are edited excerpts from the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

As we’ve written before, Mr. Trump’s behavior was inexcusable and will mar his legacy for all time.

That was the essence of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s post-trial remarks. The GOP leader voted against conviction but explicitly because he said the Constitution reserves the impeachment power only for Presidents while in office. Scholars disagree on this point, and there are good arguments on both sides. Mr. McConnell leaned on the writing of the 19th-century Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. But he also noted that impeaching a private citizen had no “limiting principle,” and could set a dangerous precedent.

But Mr. McConnell was lacerating in his criticism of Mr. Trump’s words and actions, which he blamed for deceiving and motivating supporters who had assembled on Jan. 6 at the President’s urging and became a mob. “Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty,” Mr. McConnell said. “There’s no question—none—that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

He added that the rioters had been “fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth–because he was angry he’d lost an election.”

All of this was compounded by Mr. Trump’s failure to act with dispatch to call off the rioters once he heard what was happening. As Mr. McConnell also noted, Senate acquittal does not absolve Mr. Trump of potential criminal or civil liability for actions he took in office.

This wasn’t “enabling” Mr. Trump. The voters did that in 2016, aided by the Democrats who nominated Hillary Clinton. For four years Mr. Trump’s conduct stayed largely within constitutional bounds—no matter his rhetorical excesses and Democratic efforts to drive him from office by violating norms and flogging conspiracy theories. But Mr. Trump’s dishonest challenge to the 2020 election, even after multiple defeats in court, clearly broke those bounds and culminated in the Jan. 6 riot.

Mr. Trump may run again, but he won’t win another national election. He lost re-election before the events of Jan. 6, and as President his job approval never rose above 50%. He may go on a revenge campaign tour, or run as a third-party candidate, but all he will accomplish is to divide the center-right and elect Democrats. The GOP’s defeats in the two Jan. 5 Georgia Senate races proved that.

The country is moving past the Trump Presidency, and the GOP will remain in the wilderness until it does too.

Personal note: The "This wasn’t “enabling” Mr. Trump. The voters did that in 2016, aided by the Democrats who nominated Hillary Clinton" comment was rather well done.


Comments

  • I see your point. Berlusconi is still a pain in the ___.
  • I would never underestimate the dangers and strange allure of a fascist cult of personality. I was thinking about it recently in relation to Western religion, the belief in a messiah, and the term "king of kings" in scripture, how fundamentally anti-democratic that belief can be when twisted for political ends. 80% of Evangelicals voted for Trump and I'm fairly certain they'd do it again. Despite the ironies of "love thy neighbor, etc." they were strongly represented during the riots at the capitol as well.
  • edited February 2021
    Don't get me started about religions. Why people need a religious/cult leader to tell them how and what to think is beyond me. Maybe the preferences section of their mind's OS doesn't have the "Prefer to think for myself" option enabled.

    Perhaps being raised as a Catholic, and being instructed that only Catholics were eligible for heaven served as a vaccine in my case.
  • My own religious beliefs have evolved. Maybe to the point that the church's (denomination's) Powers-That-Be would not ordain me, now. I'm a former Catholic, too. But I had the benefit of a progressive Catholic education. (Though I'm ordained Presbyterian: never a good fit for me.) Joseph Campbell's work and Jordan Peterson's work on Myth and Religion are deep and fascinating. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Nor can you make him think. Nevertheless, religion in general serves a perpetual human need. The damned Evangelicals have managed to marry what they think the flag represents with what they THINK the cross represents: Manifest Destiny and western European hegemony, with the assumption that old-style Protestantism should dominate...... because... WE fit that description, and WE want to dominate the scene. Why? "The bible says so." Shit.


  • +1 Old Joe. I was taught the same thing as a Catholic. I often wondered what happened to the good people in the Papua New Guinea or Amazon rainforests who never met a Catholic priest?!
  • Yeah, well... it's "limbo" for them, that's for sure.
  • Allegedly.
  • edited February 2021
    But with words like "lord," "king" or "messiah," as part of the daily or weekly liturgy are not many religious people primed for an autocrat--an annointed "chosen one" who will save the country and/or the world? And can such a deepseated belief in that person be countered with piddly things like facts?
  • Sometimes. For fifty years I've been trying to get my wife to address me as something along the lines of "lord" or "king" (not "messiah", though) and the facts have certainly countered my efforts. Then again, she's not religious either, so maybe your premise is valid after all.
  • @LewisBraham: And can such a deepseated belief in that person be countered with piddly things like facts?
    Not when facts are tricks from the devil.
  • No need for devils, Anna. Men are quite capable of generating evil without outside help.
  • edited February 2021
    >>>>>>But with words like "lord," "king" or "messiah," as part of the daily or weekly liturgy are not many religious people primed for an autocrat--an annointed "chosen one" who will save the country and/or the world? And can such a deepseated belief in that person be countered with piddly things like facts?
    Digging deep into history: Messianic Jews of the early to mid-1st century contrived for themselves a messiah in political terms, associated with the Halls of Power, connected to the Jerusalem Temple or at least in some sort of association with it. Among those mentioned around Jesus was "Simon, the Zealot Party member." The Zealots had decided to stop waiting for a messiah and endeavored to take things into their own hands.

    Evangelicals, largely tRumpsters and Repugnant Party members--- along with many other "Christians"--- believe in a savior who is portrayed as cleansing the corrupt Temple apparatus when he got there; a man born in the humblest of circumstances, in a manger. A man allied with the dispossessed and oppressed. It's the literary portrait that matters here, not whether or not the accounts in the gospels literally happened that way. It was not written with that in mind: to give a newspaper-ish literal account. And it ought not be forgotten that a great deal, maybe most of the Christian Testament was based on the Hebrew Scriptures, including much in the way of the theological explanations offered by Paul of Tarsus, the former Pharisee--- though the Pharisees are demonized in the gospels. Anyone is free to believe or disregard his explanations, of course. Or offer different ones.

    And today's Repugnant Party? It offers help to billionaires and peanuts to ordinary people.
    Oh, the irony.
  • @Crash- per my comment immediately above, yes?
  • I have problems with the ultra-orthodox in every Western religion to be honest--Christianity, Islam and Judaism--those who take scripture literally that was often meant to be taken figuratively, has multiple authors, not one "Author," and was actually re-written and there are different variants--see the Dead Sea Scrolls. While the Hebrew Pentateuch is the basis of the three, the theology was changed, radically altered by Christians, and especially Protestant Evangelicals, and Muslims in some negative and some positive ways in my view.

    The belief in a "personal relationship with God," in which any individual speaks directly to the diety on a regular basis and claims thus to have special insights--and occassionally special powers amongst the worst televangelist charlatans--is mostly of Protestant origin, starting with Martin Luther, although I imagine the ultra-orthodox in the other religions have adopted this technique as it's good for business. In Judaism, unless you're a prophet, you need ten men, a minyan, and preferably a rabbi to pray to God. That quorum, that requirement of community, and religious institutions to worship creates a check I think sometimes on the craziest claims. That need for institutions to worship also I think makes Catholicism and how Catholics behave politically quite different from Evangelicals. There is more textual rigidity in institutionalized religion, but less room for insane interpretations and manipulation. Not to say there haven't been many stupid things emerging from these institutions in the modern age. But I doubt you would find an unschooled Catholic priest or rabbi in a tent saying things like "the Lord is telling me something right now and He wants you to X....."

    Another major difference is the belief in heaven. Judaism never really had an afterlife originally, or if there was one, it wasn't necessarily pleasant--look up Sheol. One's deeds on earth mattered a great deal, but there was no great "reward" waiting for doing anything nutty--like blowing oneself up in a terrorist attack--or for being subservient--a rationalization Christianity used for slavery. Yet there have been false messiahs in every group, and if you poll the ultra-orthodox in the U.S., most are politically conservative. That said, there is something unique to the Evangelical movement that 80% support Trump. That is not the case with Catholics or Jews.
  • Speaking of false messiahs, we just voted one out of messiahship.
  • Old_Joe said:

    @Crash- per my comment immediately above, yes?

    +1.

  • I have problems with the ultra-orthodox in every Western religion to be honest--Christianity, Islam and Judaism--those who take scripture literally that was often meant to be taken figuratively, has multiple authors, not one "Author," and was actually re-written and there are different variants--see the Dead Sea Scrolls. While the Hebrew Pentateuch is the basis of the three, the theology was changed, radically altered by Christians, and especially Protestant Evangelicals, and Muslims in some negative and some positive ways in my view.

    The belief in a "personal relationship with God," in which any individual speaks directly to the diety on a regular basis and claims thus to have special insights--and occassionally special powers amongst the worst televangelist charlatans--is mostly of Protestant origin, starting with Martin Luther, although I imagine the ultra-orthodox in the other religions have adopted this technique as it's good for business. In Judaism, unless you're a prophet, you need ten men, a minyan, and preferably a rabbi to pray to God. That quorum, that requirement of community, and religious institutions to worship creates a check I think sometimes on the craziest claims. That need for institutions to worship also I think makes Catholicism and how Catholics behave politically quite different from Evangelicals. There is more textual rigidity in institutionalized religion, but less room for insane interpretations and manipulation. Not to say there haven't been many stupid things emerging from these institutions in the modern age. But I doubt you would find an unschooled Catholic priest or rabbi in a tent saying things like "the Lord is telling me something right now and He wants you to X....."

    Another major difference is the belief in heaven. Judaism never really had an afterlife originally, or if there was one, it wasn't necessarily pleasant--look up Sheol. One's deeds on earth mattered a great deal, but there was no great "reward" waiting for doing anything nutty--like blowing oneself up in a terrorist attack--or for being subservient--a rationalization Christianity used for slavery. Yet there have been false messiahs in every group, and if you poll the ultra-orthodox in the U.S., most are politically conservative. That said, there is something unique to the Evangelical movement that 80% support Trump. That is not the case with Catholics or Jews.

    ********************************
    I generally agree with this.
  • edited February 2021
    Mixing religion and politics can yield interesting results.
    Several so-called prophets influenced many "religious" people to abandon reason and staunchly support the immoral former president.

    "In a survey conducted last year, two political scientists found that nearly half of America’s church-attending white Protestants believed Trump was anointed by God to be president—a portion of the population that other scholars have dubbed 'prophecy voters.' The share is likely higher among charismatic Christians, who skew more politically and theologically conservative than evangelicals as a whole."

    Link
  • Mixing religion and politics can yield disastrous results, as the framers well knew, and tried their best to guard against.
  • edited February 2021
    @Observant1 Great article and exactly what I'm talking about above. It's really the "free market" version of religion, with everyone having their own individualistic "personal" relationship with God, and if you disagree with the fascist cult of personality you get death threats:
    Kat Kerr, a pink-haired preacher from Jacksonville, Florida, declared repeatedly last month that Trump had won the election “by a landslide” and that God had told her he would serve for eight years. In his video, Enlow went further. “There’s not going to be just Trump coming back,” he said. “There’s going to be at least two more Trumps that will be in office in some way.” Donald Trump, he proclaimed elsewhere, was “the primary government leader on Planet Earth.”

    Enlow, Locke and Kerr are among dozens of Christian prophets in America—religious leaders with followings among Pentecostal and charismatic Christians who claim the ability to predict the future based on dreams, visions and other supernatural phenomena. Some prophets are church leaders, while others operate independently. There are no official requirements for prophet status, though followers generally expect prophets to get at least a few prophecies right....Although common in biblical times, Christian prophecy largely fell into disuse for almost two millennia. It has a scriptural tradition: In his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul describes prophecy as one of the Holy Spirit’s gifts for believers. The contemporary version was revived, along with the better-known gifts of healing and speaking in tongues, at a Pentecostal prayer meeting in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901. Over time, the Pentecostal movement—joined in the 1960s by like-minded followers in mainline Protestant and Catholic circles known as “charismatics”—has become the world’s fastest-growing form of Christianity, with an estimated half a billion believers around the globe.

    Pentecostal worship tends to be more decentralized than the more formal mainline denominations, and many charismatic churches are completely independent. In the late 1980s, when the “Kansas City prophets,” a group of Pentecostal-charismatic leaders based in the Missouri suburbs, came out with controversial claims of supernatural visions and prophecies of future events—like a billion people becoming Christian almost overnight and hospitals being emptied of their sick patients—there was no governing body to rein them in. Concerns about accountability led to the formation in 1999 of the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, a group of about 32 people tasked with quality control.

    But many of the prophetic voices that emerged after the creation of the ACPE formed their own ministries and networks, and the council gradually lost influence. “The entire prophetic and prayer movement expanded with the digital age,” James Goll, a Nashville-based prophet who was part of the Kansas City group, said in an interview. “So, one might ask, is there accountability on these new platforms?”

    ....They ranged from Australian prophet Lana Vawser’s May 2017 vision of Jesus clothing Trump with a purple robe and crown, to Enlow’s February 2020 assertion that the victory by the Kansas City Chiefs over the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl that year had prophetic significance for, among other things, the fact that “Trump is God-sent” and is advancing “a Kingdom agenda.” (Enlow is one of several prophets who believe God speaks through major sports events.)....

    ....Within a day of the Capitol insurrection, a few other prophets who had prophesied a Trump win apologized: Johnson, as well as California pastor Shawn Bolz and Denver pastor Loren Sandford. Johnson published a long explanation, saying he had “misinterpreted” dreams and wished to “repent and ask your forgiveness.”.....Blowback was swift. A few days later, Johnson wrote on Facebook that he had received “multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry.” He also said he was losing financial support “every hour and counting.” (Johnson declined an interview request made through Brown, a mentor.)

    “He lost a lot of monthly support,” Brown told me. “He said people were unsubscribing from his email list at such a high rate, it crashed his server.”
  • edited February 2021
    Ya, the American Disease when it comes to religion is that you need not be legitimate at all, with zero accountability. Any schmoo can wake up and decide to make his/her living by starting a "church." It is perfectly legally permissible. But it's a horrible idea, in terms of how the church should define itself and and see its own mission in the world. I just got through re-reading Walter Brueggemann's "The Prophetic Imagination." (Brueggemann taught at Eden Seminary, then the Presby. Columbia Theological Sem. in the Atlanta suburbs, until he retired.) Originally published in the 1970s. Updated with endnotes and a new Intro in 2000. He concentrates mostly on Jeremiah, Isaiah and then, Jesus. It is serious theology, not like the clown-shows mentioned above. Which is not to say that Brueggemann's writing is arcane or esoteric or moot.

    At the very start, he asserts that Western Christianity is virtually OWNED by the Consumerist mentality, which makes prophetic work very difficult--- because the intended audience is so utterly resistant to it. In other words, the church (as in the people) are Americans first, Christians second. He notes the same thing surely happened during the Babylonian Exile. SOME Jews ended-up to be happy in Babylon, and so, they became Babylonians. ...And what is "Prophetic Imagination?" It starts with acknowledging the grief that must be faced, not ignored nor denied. The (Christian) community has lost its way and is virtually impotent and unable to act for the sake of the gospel, these days. ...Next: regardless of whether it seems realistic or cost-effective, the unbound Amazement connected with the NEWNESS that is possible in the scriptures must be owned and lived and breathed.

    But Caesar (or Pharaoh) is always in the background. Too often, Caesar is permitted to be in the forefront. If all we think is possible is what "Caesar" has to offer, then there can be no newness. Because Caesar is always protecting vested interests, busy managing and counting and determining everything based on the numbers.

    Moses' community was a revolutionary break with the dead-ness of their slavery under pharaoh's regime. (Nevertheless, they squawked about the terrible food and their thirst and the conditions, along the way. Their rebellion, even, is represented in the Golden Calf episode.) But such revolutionary fervor cannot be sustained forever: look at the "greatness" of Solomon--- all accomplished through exorbitantly high taxes and forced labor required of even his own citizens. His administration was devoted to flattery of himself. And just forget about the ordinary "Joe" who's barely surviving.

    Institutionalization is inevitable. People will always institutionalize what's important to them. (Andrew Greeley.) Prophetic work, after things become settled and etched in stone, is a hard road to trod. Not many rewards for the prophet, as we customarily measure "rewards."
    Sorry this is so long. Maybe longer than the excerpt, above? I just thought it might contribute to the conversation.
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