On the date shown, Goldwater, together with Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott, and Republican House of Representatives Leader John Rhodes, visited President Richard Nixon, and told him, “It’s over. You do not have the votes in the Senate to survive an impeachment trial. If you are lucky ten Republican Senators will vote to not convict you but that’s about all.” Long story short, the next day, President Nixon resigned.
Nixon’s goose was cooked due to the Watergate scandal. Watergate was many things, but primarily a burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices during the 1972 campaign. The perpetrators were ex-Cuban mercenaries, CIA hangers-on, and authoritarian scumbags who hated the Democrats and wanted to bring them down by any means necessary. As such, it was in a sense an attempted coup d’etat, a plot to bring down the primary opposition through criminal means.
Fast forward to today: Does today’s Republican Party have men (and yes, that’s sexist but given the way power is consolidated in male hands in the GOP, it’s appropriate) with the steel required to tell President Trump what Goldwater, Scott, and Rhodes told President Nixon?
That, my friends, remains to be seen. Another Arizonan — John McCain, who succeeded Rhodes in the House seat in Arizona’s District 3 at the time, may have risen to the call, but the dude is passed from this life. His wingman, Lindsey Graham, has made an effort to suck up to Trump so far to avoid getting primaried from the right. Susan Collins? John Cornyn? Don’t make me laugh.
Since the Nixon Administration, the Republican Party of the United States has morphed from a voice of reasoned conservatism to one of authoritarianist anti-democraticism, and that’s not just anti-democratic to the party but to democracy. Look at the evidence: the stolen election of 2000. Voter suppression. Stolen ballots in North Carolina’s 9th district House race. Gerrymandering exponentially. Overt racism. Voter purges. Targeting African American and Hispanic precincts for challenges to voters, and ominous signs indicating people attempting to vote may be arrested for whatever. It’s all there. The (robo) calls are originating in our House.
Could a Senate Committee’s subpoena of Donald Trump Jr. signal hope? Probably not. It’s just an empty gesture to imply bipartisanship and Don Jr.’s an easy pawn to sacrifice.
My friends, this is where the rubber meets the road. No moderate Republicans are gonna save our asses. Goldwater, Scott, and Rhodes are long since dead. What has replaced them is a foul movement rooted in white supremacy and extralegal repression. What happens next may indeed determine the fate of the planet for the next thousand years.
Be safe and keep rockin’. I love you all!