American Republican Party Abandons the U.S. Constitution

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On Saturday, February 13, 2021, the U.S. Senate voted 57-43 to convict former President Donald Trump of his role in the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Congress. With fewer than two-thirds of the votes of those present in the Senate, there was no conviction.

Although legal processes may lie ahead, the vote affirmed that the Republican Party’s fall from a legitimate constitutional and once principled Party is now complete. The Republican Party has become the Party of one man—a corrupt would-be tyrant. It has severed its ties to the Constitution and cut its roots that go back to just before Abraham Lincoln. It has trashed its legacy.

John Adams’ sentiments in a letter to Mrs. Maccaulay dated December 31, 1772 apply to today’s Republican Party, once one swaps “Party” for “Country.” Adams observed, “The Prospect before me, however, is very gloomy. My Country is in deep Distress, and has very little Ground of Hope, that She will soon, if ever get out of it. The System of a mean, and a merciless Administration, is gaining Ground upon our Patriots every Day.”

Following the failed conviction vote, the Republican Party is now the Party of despotism. It is morally corrupt. It is unprincipled. It is anti-constitutional. It has given its blessing to the insurrection that would, if it had succeeded, driven the Congress from Washington, installed Donald Trump as dictator, and overturned the Constitutional framework completed on September 17, 1787.

Aside from Republican Senators Burr, Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski, Romney, Sasse, and Toomey, who knew to put country before slavish loyalty to Donald Trump and who stood their ground to act upon the overwhelming evidence available before them, there is nothing to be salvaged. The Republican Party as an institution is gone. There is a need for a new right-of-center party to fill the political space left by its implosion.

The Party of Insurrection that the Republican Party has become deserves only political ruin after it willfully chose to appease the defeated and disgraced President who sought to overturn the American constitutional framework. No American who values the Constitution, desires the continuation of a free republic, and cherishes self-government could do anything but work for the marginalization of the Party that cast its lot with those who sought to erase the Constitution, the free republic it set forth, and the system of self-government it enshrined into law.