By Miranda Devine
The storming of the US Capitol yesterday by a group of fired-up Trump supporters was a tragedy for the Republican party, for conservatives and populist nationalists, and for Donald Trump and his legacy.
It has bestowed the great gift of the moral high ground on the most undeserving people in the world: Joe Biden and the left.
They now have a free pass to persecute their ideological enemies while enacting their pet cultural Marxist projects and changing this country irrevocably for the worst.
They will be unimpeded by a Senate now in Democratic control, thanks to Tuesday’s Georgia runoff debacle.
For Georgia, we can blame Trump’s irrational efforts to overturn the November election result, and a clueless GOP establishment which offered Peach State voters two candidates so cartoonishly wrong for the times they may as well have begged the MAGA base to stay home. A guy who made his money outsourcing jobs to China, and a wealthy elitist with a fake southern accent.
What were they thinking?
Trump’s sabotage of the Georgia runoffs and his rabble-rousing “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington yesterday were a catastrophe for his followers. They have justified the outlandish criticism of his enemies for the past four years.
His good works will be undone, and no one will be there to protect them. He will be gone, and his people will reap the whirlwind.
The footage of yesterday’s Capitol break-in will be played on eternal loop by Trump-hating media as evidence that the populist nationalist movement which propelled Trump to power was a dangerous aberration that must never be allowed to rise again.
Of course, it was wrong for pro-Trump protesters to break into the U.S. Capitol and wander around with their flags. They shouldn’t have trespassed and fought police and broken windows. Those selfies they took on the House floor — or in the case of one bearded man, sitting in House Speaker’s Nancy Pelosi’s evacuated office with his feet on her desk — were dumb and self-incriminating.
I hope they were worth it, because you know they won’t receive the kid-glove treatment that BLM-Antifa received with last year’s “mostly peaceful protests.”
They didn’t throw bricks at police or burn police buildings to the ground or beat innocent passersby senseless. But they will have the book thrown at them, because it’s not the crime you commit that matters any more, it’s who you are.
So, as bad as the Capitol Hill anarchy yesterday looked, we shouldn’t be surprised after the way leftist violence was condoned most of last year. You let the genie out of the bottle, there’s no telling where it goes.
Joe Biden’s attempt at being a teleprompter statesman condemning the protests was laughable. Does he think we forgot he sat by benignly as his supporters torched American cities for months leading up to the election? Portland is still burning, not that you hear that on CNN.
Suddenly the same politicians and media squawkers who turned a blind eye to actual violence, arson and murder are big advocates of “law and order.” Give me a break.
Yesterday wasn’t all about overturning the election result, as much effort as Trump has put into that doomed project over the past two months.
Frustration among his supporters has been building to boiling point for four years, as every power base conspired to subvert his 2016 election win and hobble his presidency. He was stymied until the end, and this is the result.
But becoming what you hate isn’t the answer.
Nor is burning down the Republican Party in the vain hope that a new party more to your liking somehow will rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
And nor is attacking Trump’s most loyal ally, without whom he probably never would have been elected, Mike Pence.
There were a lot of egregious moments yesterday but the probably the most unfair was when Pence became MAGA enemy No. 1. There even was a call for the Capitol invaders to “arrest” the vice -president.
That is entirely Trump’s fault. He has been bullying, cajoling and gaslighting Pence to help him out of the dead end he found himself in with two weeks to Inauguration Day.
Trump referred to Pence no fewer than seven time in his rally speech on the Ellipse yesterday. “I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do.”
But Pence quite properly refused the demand he block Congress’ confirmation of Biden as president yesterday.
Almost half of all voters, including 69 percent of Republicans, don’t believe Biden won the November election fairly, according to the latest Rasmussen poll.
That’s a shocking vote of no confidence.
But, having failed to prove your case in court after trying for two months, you can’t load the entire weight of unrealistic expectations onto Pence at the last minute.
In his last days as president, Barack Obama honored Vice President Biden with the Medal of Freedom. In his last days as President, Trump kicked Pence in the teeth.
It’s wrong and he should apologize for it along with everything else that happened yesterday.
He has two weeks left to persuade his supporters to put the 2020 election behind them and focus on the real fight ahead, winning back the House in 2022, and the White House in 2024. Everything else is a distraction.
- NB: Miranda Devine Wrote this article for The New York Post
