The GOP Is the Party of Civil War

This article is from Slate by William Saletan:

As President Donald Trump heads to Georgia for a campaign rally on Saturday, a menace is spreading across the country: a right-wing insurrection, led by the president and his supporters, to overthrow the 2020 election by intimidation or force. That threat is becoming a central issue in the Jan. 5 Georgia runoffs that will decide control of the U.S. Senate.

The insurrection has been boiling at pro-Trump rallies in the past few weeks. In Georgia, amid chants of “victory or death,” speakers have vowed to “remove” a new Democratic administration, arguing that it “doesn’t have the military on their side.” At a rally led by Donald Trump Jr., a speaker warned, “We’re getting ready to start shooting.” Last weekend in Michigan, a crowd cheered as a member of the Proud Boys declared, “We don’t want a civil war, but we’re already in one. And we’re in it to win it.” In Florida, rally leaders called the election result a “war on our homeland” and pledged, “We will not allow them to fire a man for doing his job perfect.” In Arizona, a speaker demanded the imprisonment of President-elect Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. “We have to protect [Trump] at any cost,” he said. Another speaker denounced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, calling for “rebellion” and adding, “I’d love to see half of these people hung by the neck.” The crowd shouted its approval.

Trump has endorsed these rallies and has advocated—and attempted—direct interference in the election. He demanded that states “stop the count.” He tweeted, contrary to some state laws, that “any vote that came in after election day will not be counted.” He said “hundreds of thousands” of votes for Biden should be nullified, or should “count toward us,” because they were tabulated outside the view of partisan Republicans. Through the intervention of Republican legislatures or the Supreme Court—three of whose members he has appointed—he insisted that “the results of the individual swing states must be overturned, and overturned immediately.”

Read the full article here.