Home WebMail Saturday, November 2, 2024, 12:30 AM | Calgary | -1.1°C | Regions Advertise Login | Our platform is in maintenance mode. Some URLs may not be available. |
Posted: 2021-02-16T22:18:46Z | Updated: 2021-02-16T22:18:46Z

Seven Republican members of the U.S. Senate voted to find former President Donald Trump guilty of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead. By the end of this week, six of the seven may have faced censures from local and state Republican parties back home because of those votes.

Together with the 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump, the seven GOP senators made Trumps second impeachment the most bipartisan in American history. But if those votes foreshadowed a looming civil war within the GOP, the hasty efforts to censure anyone who crossed Trump are a good indication of which side has the larger army.

As the riot in the Capitol played out, even the GOP lawmakers who helped incite it briefly attempted to distance themselves from the mess they had created. But rather than a reckoning, the Republican Party is attempting a purge. From Congress to state legislatures, and in the state- and county-level parties that make up its base, the GOPs rank and file has emerged from an insurrection and a second impeachment trial united against American democracy and the few members of the party still willing to stand up for it.

The North Carolina GOP voted Monday to censure Sen. Richard Burr , two days after the Louisiana Republican Party censured Sen. Bill Cassidy . Local Republican parties in Alaska also passed resolutions to censure Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and the Pennsylvania GOP is planning a possible censure of Sen. Pat Toomey after at least one county party already voted to do so . State party leaders in Maine are at least discussing a censure for Sen. Susan Collins. Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who earned censures from multiple county parties earlier this month after blaming Trump for the Capitol riot, could soon face a statewide censure effort, CNBC reported this week. Some Utah Republicans circulated a petition to censure Sen. Mitt Romney over his vote, but the state GOP announced Monday that it would not move forward with the effort.

There is little question that Trump incited the riot. His peddling of conspiracy theories led to the protests that set the stage for them, and many of the rioters have since admitted that they rallied outside the Capitol, and later entered it, because they believed thats what Trump had told them to do at a rally earlier that day. Trump sent a tweet attacking Vice President Mike Pence just minutes after learning that Pences life was in danger inside the building, and mocked House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy over the phone as McCarthy begged him to call off the rioters.